


household gods

by yogurtgun



Category: John Wick (Movies), Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, BAMF Stiles, Emissary Stiles Stilinski, Family Drama, Gen, John Wick has to deal with witches and he's not happy, John Wick is a werewolf, John Wick's bad bad no good week, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Sheriff Stilinski's Name is Noah, Wakes & Funerals, Werewolves, Witches, and i'm sorry about that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-22
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-03-09 19:04:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 33,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18923176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yogurtgun/pseuds/yogurtgun
Summary: Helen's instructions were clear: the moment she was gone John was supposes to call her brother in law to help John deal with her loss. However, tied down with work, it's her nephew that makes his way east to New York.Noah’s son, the last time John saw him, was an anxious, jittery, fifteen-year-old who smelled of adderall, axe body spray, and hormones. The man who knocks on his doors that evening looks like him, except somewhere in the last three years Stiles had the time to hit a growth spur then have a truck reverse over him twice.





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> This is a cross-over simply because I found John Wick walking away from his injuries willy-nilly a bit unbelievable. Stiles is Helen's nephew because we know nothing about Claudia, his mother. Furthermore, in the first movie we see a lot of people come to the funeral, who are all Helen's family and friends. 
> 
> Also werewolf John Wick is hot. We all know why we're here.

The hand with which he holds the phone to his ear is trembling. Cramped into one of the hospital’s abysmal waiting-room chairs, John can barely make out what he’s hearing over the pounding in his head and three thousand miles distance. Helen is gone. Helen is _gone_ and he feels uprooted and unhinged. He has lost his wife, his family, and his pack all in one.

“John?” Noah’s voice floats in his ear, concerned. Noah had gone through this, John tries to reason with himself. He survived. If he could, then Jon can too. It’s the reason Helen had told him to call Noah first.

“I’m here,” John replies.

“I’m sending Stiles up there. You shouldn’t be alone right now. Not through this.”

Noah doesn’t sounds as if he’s willing to take protests. Had Helen been pushy like this when her sister died?

“You don’t have to, Noah. I can take care of it.”

Even to his own ears he sounds mechanical. More than usual. More importantly, he isn’t sure if he can deal with losing Helen and having someone in his space so quickly.

“John. These two amazing women brought us together, lucky bastards that we are. Helen was with me after Claudia passed. We may not be blood-related, but you’re still family. You’ll always be family.”

John feels his throat tightening. Somewhere between clearing it and his vision going blurry, he accepts.

#### -

Noah’s son, the last time John saw him, was an anxious, jittery, fifteen-year-old who smelled of adderall, axe body spray, and hormones. The man who knocks on his doors that evening looks like him, except somewhere in the last three years Stiles had the time to hit a growth spur then have a truck reverse over him twice.

“Uncle John,” he says with a small, tired, smile.

John notes the way he leans against the extended handle of his suitcase. There’s something stiff in the way he stands. An injury or a sprained ankle. Or, maybe, John’s thinking too much and it’s just the effects of a six-hour flight across three different time-zones.

He pulls the doors open and Stiles steps forward into a hug that, at first purfectory, ends up with John signing into Stiles’ shoulder as the young man gives him a good squeeze. He still smells of adderall. It’s good to have something familiar to cling to.

“I’m sorry about Aunt Helen.” Stiles’ words are heavy, knowing, and genuine in that sort of way only someone who has also lost something important would use. John remembers that just as Helen had loved Stiles for being her sister’s son, so did Stiles love Helen for being one of the few people who’d known, and would talk, about his mother.

Stiles rolls his little suitcase into the foyer and leaves it at the doors with his backpack. When he straightens up, he’s almost as tall as John.

“You’ve grown,” John notes. He can’t believe Noah actually bundled him up on the first flight to New York. It’s heartwarming in all the ways John isn’t used to expect.

“Turned the famous one-eight a couple of months ago.”

John and Helen had been aware and sent over a gift since they couldn’t visit. But that isn’t what John meant when he made the comment.

The stiffness is still with Stiles when John walks him into the living room. There’s something jarring about the lack of converse sneakers and large, hanging, hoodies covering graphic tees. Even the shorn hair is gone. Stiles has changed, and he looks exhausted.

“Coffee? Or would you like dinner instead?”

Stiles gingerly sits down on the couch and accepts tea instead. Caffeine, he says, clashes with his medication.

Only when he’s in the kitchen, as he’s pouring how water over the teabags, does the scent finally hits John. Under sweat and a nauseating mix of people-smells, lays the scent of a werewolf. Stiles is covered with it. Reeks of it. How did he not notice until now?

John squeezes the handle of the electric kettle, making the plastic groan. He has to breathe through the shock, the panic, and his instincts which recognize danger. He’s vulnerable now and he’s been running on preservation mode ever since he left the hospital. John has to reminding himself nobody’s invading his home. It’s just Stiles, and Stiles is family. It helps that the scent isn’t coming from Stiles himself but from his clothes.

John has had enough time during retirement to get used to seeing creatures in everyday life, hurrying along New York’s crowded streets, heads down and going about their own day. It’s his terrible integration into the sunny side of the world that makes him paranoid. After all, while he had an account open in the Continental, he met more creatures in the same line of work as him then he’d met regular people. The two worlds aren’t so separate.

The fact is that the creatures still rely on a veil of secrecy that separates them from humans, as much as it separates them from the world of crime under the table. The rules are untold but known. They must never reveal what they are and what more might exist to those uninitiated. It’s a service to people who cannot protect themselves and wish only to lead normal lives. John never had the necessity of having that talk with Helen. Now, John wonders if Stiles is aware of the mark he’s carrying on himself.

Resolving to not overthinking it and having calmed down, John carries back the tea. Stiles has, surprisingly, not moved from the spot. Dressed in dark pants and black too-large sweater that hangs off of his thin frame, and pale beyond words except for the dark bruises under his eyes, he looks like a statue.

Whatever energy he’d seen in Stiles three years ago is gone, sapped away, stolen, leaving gaunt cheeks and anemic fingers.

After Noah’s call, John had wondered what Stiles could do for him when he’d thought of him as just a regular teenager. Now, he wonders what this exhausted version of the boy can even attempt. They drink tea in unbroken silence.

“Dad sent me up here to help, but I don’t want to push my nose into something if you don’t want me to,” Stiles finally says after the tea is gone. “I assume Aunt Helen and you already had some kind of arrangements but you need to contact the funeral home if you’ve not already. And give the obituary. If you like I can handle coordinating between the morgue, the funeral home and florists while you call up the family for the wake.”

John takes a good look at Stiles. “You’re informed.”

Stiles’ mouth presses into a thin line as he shrugs. “This isn’t my first rodeo. I helped the department when Lahey went on that killing rampage at the station a couple of years ago.”

John remembers Noah mentioning that Stiles liked to be involved with the department. He also remembers Helen worrying about the two of them after she’d seen the news coming out of California.

For some reason the little town of Beacon Hills had become a murder hub for the few years Noah and Stiles didn’t visit them in New York. He is glad, if nothing else, that they are both safe.

The young man seems earnest in helping him. John supposes he should let him. Helen _had_ told him to call Noah. To let him do what he always did best: help and reassure. Stiles is somehow different, but he’s family. Family. He still has that, John realizes belatedly. Stiles is here for him as much as he’s here for his aunt. Something in John settles.

“We should have the viewing in two days. Helen had been talking about this funeral home--”

Once John starts, he and Stiles end up spending a couple of hours talking about the arrangements. They realize it’s late only when Stiles’ phone starts ringing in an ear-piercing statement that ‘friendship never ends’ by an annoying female voice, which John only later recognizes is a song Helen used to like around the time they met.

Stiles visibly perks up. He excuses himself, chuckling to himself quietly, and goes to answer the phone. John makes a conscious effort not to listen in and focuses his attention on clearing up the dishes from the living room, checking the time as he passes to the kitchen. He should bring Stiles’ things up to the guest bedroom and let the boy sleep.

Whoever it is on the other end of Stiles’ phone, doesn’t waste words. Stiles pops his head inside the kitchen and says, “Sorry about that.”

John shrugs. As he’d planned, he shows Stiles the guest bedroom on the second floor, and carries his things up for him. They say goodnight, and John too retires for the evening. His feelings catch up with him only when he’s back in his bedroom, when he sees the empty bed, and knows that no amount of work will allow him to forget that he is, and will be, alone for the rest of his life.

#### -

As an outsider looking in, John had always considered relationships complicated. To him, family bonds were less pillars of support and love, and more parasitic cohabitation as means of survival. In exchange for serving, he was bound to Ruska Roma, who smuggled him out of Belarus. Him, John thinks, and all the other desperate children who had noone and nothing, and would have starved long before adulthood.

The Marine Corps were forced tolerance. He knew soldiers that called themselves brothers but there was no such familiarity between John and other men that served. The closest one that got to the semblance of it was Marcus, but they became friendly only after they spiraled into the world held firmly under the table. John found no warmth under Tarasovs after that. They were means to each other’s ends.

Helen had strong opinions when it came to family just like she had strong opinions about everything else. One of her favorite things she liked saying is that nobody messes you up more than family. At the time, she’d been particularly angry with her mother.

Watching Gretta now as she seizes up her grandson, John is inclined to believe it. After all, Helen had decidedly estranged herself from her after she’d disowned Claudia, Stiles’ mother. John never got the full story, according to Helen Claudia had always been a bit of a wild-child, but the straw that broke the camel's back had been her deciding to stay in California and marry.

The last time John had seen Gretta was at Claudia’s funeral, and he would have been glad to never see her again. With a glass of wine in her hand, and another full of sharp red nails, with large stylized glasses on the tip of her nose and wearing an offensive amount of perfume, she looks like she has always appeared to John -- vicious, petty, and intentional. All of that combines in her gaze now which she brandishes at Stiles as if he’s ready for culling. It’s the same look she’s been giving him since the moment she’d turned up at the house. It tells John she’s been keeping tabs.

At eleven in the morning, sitting at the kitchen table, Stiles looks like a particularly energetic piece of vegetation, meaning that the most he does is sway in his seat and clamp his mouth around his decaf coffee mug which he’s at this point re-filled twice.

John wonders if it’s better playing obtuse and ignorant.

“I did not think you would have house guests,” Gretta says, her nail clinking against her glass.

“Stiles is helping me with the preparations.” John’s tone, as always, is even and calm. It does not keep Gretta from scowling.

“ _Please_ . If you needed help you know one of _us_ would have been more than willing to assist you. That is why I am here.”

Streaks of grey hair are tucked behind one large golden-earring holding ear. John tries to determine whether Gretta’s distaste for Stiles comes from the fact that he’s the monument of Claudia’s disobedience or that she can’t throw her weight around, can’t dominate him, considering he knows nothing of the world John and Gretta share.

“I’ve found being willing and being there to be two separate things,” Stiles says before John can insist on having urgent business, and Gretta inevitably finding some way to offend him.

Her stare snaps back to Stiles. “And how _is_ your father?”

Stiles’ face pulls into a smirk. “He told me I should avoid the family reunions. Said rudeness runs in the family. On my mom’s side.”

Gretta positively bristles. John, despite himself, finds it slightly amusing.

Out of her luxury handbag Gretta pulls out a swathe of documents. “The... _family_ is going to front all the funeral costs. We just need your signature. You need not worry about any arrangements.”

John looks up from his coffee and the papers, directly at Gretta. Audacity comes hand in hand with being an alpha, being a head in the Assembly, and yet, John is surprised and baffled. “No,” he says.

Gretta, for all of her confidence, actually looks surprised. “Excuse me?”

“No,” John repeats.

A vein on her forehead, usually hidden under her makeup, starts pulsing. “John,” she hisses, “I buried one daughter, and I’ll bury Helen too.”

Her teeth grind together as she speaks. No doubt, her wolf has been drawn out by the anger.

“Actually, as far as I remember, you refused to make an appearance,” Stiles offers nonchalantly, between sips of coffee. “Which was a courtesy call even then, considering you _disowned_ mom.”

Gretta stands. For a moment, John imagines her pulling Stiles across the table and shredding into him with her claws. She slaps the table, and stuffs the papers back into her purse. “I don’t have to take this from a _brat_.”

She turns and, heels clack on the wooden floor, sweeps out of the kitchen. John goes after her only because she is, in the end, Helen’s mother. When he catches up to her she’s already by the front doors.

With one hand on the doorknob, she grabs John’s hand with the other and says, “Are you really going to let _him_ help you and not _me_?”

“You’re not helping, Gretta. You’re bribing your conscience.”

Her hold on his wrist turns to iron. Her hazel eyes flash, overrun with primal, primordial red. She needed him to bend for her because she is alpha, because she needs to feel powerful and in control, because John should be an easy target. He has no pack. His abilities are far overshadowed by her own. But John had never been under her influence, regardless of her alpha status.

A moment passes, then another, and her anger cools, red retracting back to brown. Gretta leaves with a guttural noise of disgust ripped from her throat.

#### -

The dissonance between seeing Helen, alive, in the hospital bed but sapped, pale and weak, and seeing her dead, but painted so she looks as if she could just climb out of the coffin, is startling and devastating all at once. He can barely avert his gaze from her prone form, but when he does, he cannot force himself to look back.

The stream of people coming in for the viewing is neverending, and John shakes more hands than he has, he feels like, in his entire life. At least, he thinks, they don’t linger. Some had flown in and, jetlagged, are craving their hotel rooms. Others, like Gretta, are there to make a statement.

Today, she wears lilac clasp earrings that are jarring against her black ensemble. She’s surrounded by relations, as if they traveled the hajj to see her.

“I never knew I had so many cousins,” Stiles says, voice dry, shifting next to him. They’re sitting in one of the peers. Stiles had led him to sit down after the main stream of people ended. They didn’t come to see him after all.

“Gretta is the oldest of five,” John recites what Helen had once explained to him. “At this point, the _family_ has over a hundred members.”

Between pressed lips, Stiles intones, “How interesting mom only ever talked with Aunt Helen.”

John wishes he could explain werewolves, pack and pack loyalties to Stiles, to soothe him. But there’s nothing to soothe. Stiles’ proverbial feathers aren’t ruffled. His gaze is calculating, knowing, mouth twisting into a little smirk, as if he’s measuring all the other people and finding them uninteresting, unimportant. Background.

Stiles’ mother died a long time ago. It’s already been eight years. The pain must have passed, in some ways, numbed by him growing. It’s always easier on children. John has nothing else to look forward to but growing old, alone, and it holds no sweetness and no interest for him without Helen.

“Your mom knew how to pick people,” John replies.

Stiles snorts. Then he stands, prepared to poke the beehive. John turns back to where Helen lays, and notes that the florist did a good job. There are daisies everywhere.

#### -

“I’m so sorry I won’t be able to be there, John,” Noah says tiredly into the phone. “The office has kidnapped me and handcuffed me to the chair. We have unsolved murders that need to be dealt with ASAP. It’s a mess.”

“Trouble?” John asks, staring at his funeral suit. It must be an ungodly hour on West Coast.

The weather has decided to stay grim and overcast since yesterday, only now with the addition of showers of rain. New York spring is as tumultuous as ever.

Noah tells him something while John considers the shoes, and wonders if they’ll withstand the weather. They’re from the same manufacturer he’d been wearing during jobs, and he’d stepped in worse than water. In truth, the whole ensemble reminds John too closely of what used to be his uniform while he was employed. He can’t shake the association any more than he can shake his training, much as he’d like to do so.

“...talking about trouble,” Noah’s voice swims back into his ear. “Stiles isn’t pushing it is he? I know he can be a lot.”

“No, he’s been helpful. Unquiet. It’s...kind of nice.”

John considers the way Stiles had completely ignored Gretta and went to socialize with his distant family, as if it were only to spite her. Helen, had she been able to see it, would have laughed her heart out.

“Oh,” he hears. Then a quick stuttered, “Well. That’s good. But feel free to tell him off if he crosses any boundaries alright? He’s very good at stepping on toes.”

“He said something similar actually,” John replies, deciding to stop stalling and start getting dressed. The procession can’t start without them, and he can already hear Stiles in the living room starting to pace.

Though he’d been quiet the first night, energy returned to the young man the next day. The limp was gone as well. John shouldn’t have worried, it really was just jet lag after all.

“Well, I won’t be keeping you anymore. Just--” There’s a tired sigh, and a squeaking of a chair in the background of John’s call. “It will be fine. You will be fine. Eventually.”

“Thank you Noah,” John says in lieu of goodbye.

John dresses and descends down to the kitchen where Stiles is, enthusiastically, abusing the decaf John had bought for him. John had refused catering but Stiles had convinced him that it would be easier to organize something small for the reception after the funeral, without thinking about food arrangement themselves, and he has obviously been eating the sweets. Stiles found someone good but cheap, through what he self-described as _google-fu._ Jon hadn’t be sure if he should have been embarrassed on his part.

The food does smell good, fresh. That’s the best he can ask for really.

“Ready?” Stiles asks. He’s wearing, John notices feeling emotions rolling in his gut, the bowtie Helen had given him for his fifteenth birthday. Printed on a black cloth were small dots that, when inspected closely, were in fact daisies.

John nods and Stiles gives him a look that, had it been pitying, would have made John feel pathetic. But it isn’t. He pats John’s shoulder in encouragement. It tells him Stiles understands this is difficult but that he will be there for him.

In that moment, John doesn’t consider how an eighteen-year-old can understand what he needs and what to do to calm him. He doesn’t remember to ask. Instead, he and Stiles get into the Mustang, and drive to the funeral home.

It is too soon, he feels like, that he’s standing in front of the grave and staring at the six-foot wooden box they’d lowered his life in and are about to burry. It’s pouring rain, but John can’t make himself cry. It would be better, he knows, to let it out. But he’s never been the type to show what he’s feeling on his face.

Next to him, Stiles is not as stoic. Even over the torrent John can smell the salt of his tears on his tongue. The viewing, and the funeral, John thinks, are a blood letting. A way to let out the poison of grief, of bitterness, of heartache and helplessness. A way to heal oneself. But John is immune to the practice. He’s been bled dry already by people far less deserving. Grief, John knows, he will be carrying around with himself like Helen’s picture in his wallet.

People thin out, heading either for the airport, their home, or John’s house. The funeral people are waiting on him to finish filling the grave. But John can only stare at the six foot rectangle.

If anybody deserved to die, it should have been him. He earned it so many times over: for the times he killed, for the times he didn’t, for all of his blood-money that laid foundation to his new life. Helen didn’t.

“John,” Stiles says after a while. Despite himself, John startles. He’d not realized the boy still with him. “I’ll be waiting for you in the car, alright?”

John nods. He hears the splashes of feet behind him, and he turns to watch Stiles amble back to the parking, passing by and eyeing a familiar figure.

Marcus catches his look and John feels beckoned over. There is nothing else he can do for Helen now.

Once, Marcus explained to him how his new world operated, what the rules of it were and how distant they were from the rules that bound him as a creature and a wolf. The underground was distant from the supernatural society but cut from the same cloth. Thin threads connect them together in shapes of whispers, bedtime stories, wives’ tales.

Now, Marcus stands and has no explanation for his new world, for the real world, in which death means something, and is more valuable than golden coins.

“Why are you here?” John asks. He always infers a motive from people like him. But Marcus only gives him a look, shoulders sagging. John doesn’t think he has anything in him left to give.

“Just checking up on an old friend,” he says. There’s something poignant in his gaze which John cannot discern. It softens when he says, “Goodbye, John.”

#### -

The funeral sapped more from him than he’d originally thought. Even as he drives, John feels shut off, mechanical, and he cannot speak. In the house, with so many people around, it’s worse. He wishes he could just shout for everyone to get the hell out, let him grieve, and give him a chance to consider what the hell he’s going to do with the rest of his life now that it stretches ominously in front of him in a threat of endless torment.

The past three days Stiles had been an unobtrusive guest and a helping hand, even with his mandatory 3 a.m. coffee calls. Now, he wrangles Helen’s family and the few friends they have over at the reception. John doesn’t follow him with his eyes, but whenever he looks in a direction, there’s Stiles with a bottle of wine to refill glasses, or to offer some food, or to chat, and always, it seems, to steer people away from John.

Unlike Stiles, John thinks as he watches Gretta sit down on the couch beside him, he can’t fight off a mourning alpha werewolf.

The proximity enhances the severity of her perfume, making John wish he could gag, then wish he could douse her with water.

“Look at him,” she says quietly, as if they’re continuing a conversation they’ve had just moment before. “Thin, frail. I’m sixty-seven John, and I could snap him in half.”

John leans forward and curls himself around his glass of bourbon. He brings it to his nose, and for a few moments, all he can smell is the alcohol and whatever wood they’d used to barrell it in.

“You, John, I never liked. I wanted so much better for Helen. A stable pack to bring into the fold, a good nice beta. God knows the Assembly could have offered a better candidate than an omega. At least you weren’t afraid. You were never afraid of me.” She repeats it again then scoffs, as if she’s above being offended. As if being unafraid is something he should be ashamed of. But he understands what their little community thinks of him, a loner.

Wolves were never supposed to go without a pack. Jon is only a little better than a human, and only because he’d been born into his powers rather than made. He’s the scum on Gretta’s shoes, and every other alpha like her, who was born into power and family. It’s not dissimilar to children born into powerful families that hold a seat at the Table. It’s why he has never been intimidated. He’s already made a deal with one of the devils.

“At least you’re a wolf, I kept saying to myself.” Gretta continues to talk but John tunes her out, focusing instead on his drink, and the clock ticking. He knows everybody needs this to say goodbye to Helen as much as he does, but he wishes he could have been left alone with his grief.

Soon enough the bourbon is gone, and Stiles appears by his side to top of his glass, like a little house god of good intentions. He doesn’t touch John, but John feels the metaphorical hand on his shoulder when Stiles asks, “Are you alright?”

John’s good as long as he keeps drinking the good bourbon with wolfsbane in it. Werewolves might not be able to get drunk off of the regular stuff, but the plant cuts right through him.

He nods in response, and Stiles moves to Gretta. “More wine?”

Gretta scoffs and says, “Nothing from you.”

John lifts his head up enough to watch as Stiles’ eyebrows quirk and a fake smile appears on his face. “Maybe water would be better.”

Gretta takes an inconspicuous sniff, more for the snobbish effect than anything else, and John can actually see when Stiles’s scent, or rather lack thereof, connects with her. After he switched the black jumper for a proper suit the scent of wolf disappears, exchanged for the perfume of hair gel, after shave, and clothing detergent. Nothing particular. Nothing that would have helped John, or any other werewolf, to pick him out of the crowd.

After Stiles leaves, Gretta picks up her monologue. “Plain,” she says, “just like his father.”

John waits until she’s finished and finally turns towards her. “She would have said no.”

Gretta’s eyebrow lifts, creasing her forehead. “You have to speak up, John. You’re not making sense.”

“Even if you wanted to give her the bite, she would have refused. Just like Claudia refused.”

He waits for an outburst. Gretta was always that kind of person. But it comes in a different way. They can’t shout here, can’t throw words, and she can’t threaten him even though it had always been ineffective.

Instead, with as much cloying sweet venom as she can muster up, she says, “She could have lived if you’d let me bite her. Better a live wolf than a dead human. But it’s you who has to live with the consequences of your inactions.”

She sets down her glass of wine on top of the table and stands. She’s the first one to leave. The rest of the family starts trickling out: first the Stein’s, following after their alpha, then John and Helen’s friends. By the time the house is empty and Stiles nudges his foot with his shoe, John is ready to go to bed.

“I’ll clean up--” Before Stiles can finish the doorbell rings. He looks towards the foyer then follows up with, “--and you get the doors?”

In hindsight, it’s a good decision he brings the dog into the hallway where he reads the letter because it would have been quite something for Stiles to come upon him in the living room crying his heart out.

Helen had always known what she meant to John, because he’d never shied away from telling her. She’d understood him. She’d _seen_ him. And now she’s managed not only to give him her family as support but also someone who is going to love him, and who John can love in Helen’s stead. She couldn’t give John a mint-new pack, but in her own way, she’d given him another family member. A dog that he can grow old with. John can even smell Helen on the letter when he brings it up to his nose, and he doesn’t know if he’s better or worse for it.

As it is, John manages to collect himself after a while, take a few fortifying breaths, clean his face. He leaves Stiles to finish cleaning up and heads for the bedroom. He can deal with everything else tomorrow.

It’s still somehow calming to hear noise from the kitchen, on the clock, at three in the morning, the espresso machine wringing out a pot of coffee that Stiles appears to subside on.

#### -

“How come I never knew you had a dog?”

Stiles is, somewhat expectedly, enamored with Daisy. He’s also dressed up in regular clothes: jeans, hoodie, the sneakers John had missed from before. He looks marginally more of an eighteen-year-old than before.

“Are you leaving?” John asks, tactless.

Stiles continues playing with Daisy as he answers. “Well, I was planning to but then Dad reminded me that I needed to looks into colleges here anyways.” He looks up at John quickly, as if he’d done something wrong. “If you don’t mind me hanging around for a day or two more.”

“Not at all.” He moves over to get cereal, and realizes he doesn’t have any dog food. ”She was delivered yesterday.”

He doesn’t even have to consider letting Stiles stay. Helen wouldn’t have blinked an eye. She always had a soft spot for him when it came to family repertoire, and after yesterday John is certain he’s becoming one of John’s favorite people as well. Not to mention he’d managed to clean up the house so well, John can’t even smell Gretta’s perfume on the couch anymore, though he’s convinced she’d sprayed some on there on purpose.

“Neat, thanks.”

Stiles continues petting Daisy, squatted on the floor as if he’s a child looking at ants, even as John goes about finish up his breakfast.

“I’m going out to the shop. I’ll drive you to the city,” John offers. He doesn’t get any opposition.

#### -

After dropping Stiles off, John goes to buy kibble, dog toys, towels. He meets a group of Russians, and John’s afternoon isn’t ruined as much as he’s reminded that nothing has really changed. Helen isn’t here, John’s world has imploded, and assholes still roam around in their stolen cars blasting pop music. New York has become apathetic. There’s too many of them to mourn.

#### -

Whether it’s because he’s in a different headspace or because he’s just always been bad with social cues, John doesn’t question it when Stiles sends him a text message telling him he’ll be coming home late. He’s there at three in the morning making coffee.

The reason why John wakes up in concern the next night, Stiles gone to the city again, is the lack of noise coming from the kitchen downstairs. His phone has no messages.

Laying in the bed, John considers a dozen or so scenarios, from gruesome death to drunk slumming, before he forces himself to roll out of it, much to Daisy’s distress. He needs to make sure. If not his mind, his wolf needs to do something about this break in routine.

John pads his way over to Stiles’ guest bedroom which is made-up and empty. He crack the door open and the scent inside rushes John’s senses, almost overwhelming when compared to the near-sterile scent Stiles usually carries. As if, John thinks as he slips inside, all of Stiles’ smells were being held in this room. It makes John uncomfortable, hair standing on edge. Something isn’t quite right but he does not know what.

Stiles’ backpack is gone but his suitcase remains. He unceremoniously flips it open and the scent that hits him then is of mountain ash. It’s so strong John has to lean back and cover his mouth. He smells wolfsbane as well and it’s not the kind that you drink.

However, whatever carried that scent is not in the suitcase. Jon searches it thoroughly but there’s nothing inside except regular clothes. The real problem now is how John could have missed so much wolfsbane entering his house, and the question immediately after, what does Stiles need so much of it for?

He straightens the suitcase, then walks out of the room. John thinks as he heads to the kitchen, but Stiles scent remains contained within the four walls of the guest-bedroom. It’s nowhere in the house. Stiles weirdly smelled of nothing. He scent-cleaned the house the same way.

John knows charms that can do that. In their society scent is almost the most important factor: eyes can fail, and perfume can attempt to mask, but you know a creature when you scent them. The only ones who wish to hide their scent are those who are not looking to be found or found out. Has John become so sloppy not to recognize another creature under his roof?

And yet, only so many people carry around so much wolfsbane, and only a few creatures can touch mountain ash. Those who do tend to be hunters.

John feels the hairs on the back of his neck stand just before something connects with it. It’s hard, metal. John topples to the floor, recognizing the feeling of a bat a moment later.

It connects with his ribs next. Had he not braced, they would have shattered. John can’t get his bearings right, can’t even get a breath in before a foot connects with his face, breaking his nose. His vision is hazy, swimming around the edges. His healing is focusing on the head injury. It’s critical time the assailant, whoever they are, uses to bash him up.

How did he not hear them? How could he not even smell them? A terrifying thought occurs to John: hunted by his own family in his own home. He feels someone’s heel hit right between his ribs and he groans in pain.

Someone turns on the light. John’s gaze focuses. His eyes hurt for a moment from adjusting so quickly. He notes the weapon first -- bat as he’d thought. Two -- no, three -- men. He can’t take them. Not right now. Hunters? Is Stiles one of them?

They start speaking Russian. Oh, John knows now what this is about. That doesn’t make it any less easy when he hears Daisy squealing and it makes it all the worse when he hears her sudden squealing stop. The silence is a horrible sound. Then, he hears the front doors close.

John listens intently as Stiles shuffles in, a strange tempo to his gate as if he’s dragging his feet. The Russians take positions by the wall, while one of them watches over John.

His nose may be broken, but even through it, he can still taste the scents from Stiles in the air, twisting and turning, into a nauseating concoction. Wolfsbane, blood, something else, worse. He smells like bodies left out in the sun to rot. In the next instance, all of those smells are gone, as Stiles walks into the room. Halfway through saying his name, there’s another crack, the bat connecting with the back of Stiles’ head. John, for the first time, considers that this Stiles might die. John has healing, but Stiles does not.

Clinging to consciousness, all John can consider is whether he has just let some bastards kill everything Helen worked so hard to give him.

 


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The POVs will be switching each chapter from John to Stiles, since I wanted John to appear badass too :D The story is already written out, I'll be posting as I edit the chapters. Thank you for the amazing feedback!

Two things coax him to awareness before he can open his eyes: an awful pungent smell he’s 90% sure is coming from him, and his phone going off, Spice Girls demanding ‘so tell me what you want, what you really, really want’. As annoying as it is being woken up, he always feels a chuckle in his chest hearing the song.

Stiles opens his eyes and immediately regrets it. For one, his head hurts. In fact he’s positively dizzy and has to blink away dark spots. For the other, John is bowed over him, staring at him with _concern,_ and his face is _bloody_.

“What--” Stiles croaks, pushing his palms against the floor -- why the hell is he on the floor -- so he can lift himself up.

His phone continues to ring incessantly until, it seems, the battery dies.

“Take it slow, you took a hard hit,” John tells him.

He’s talking deliberately slow so Stiles can catch what he’s saying. That’s what frightens Stiles, perhaps more than it really should. Nothing good can come out from waking up _on the floor_ with your uncle’s face scraped up.

“John?” Stiles asks, sounding small even to himself.

“Do you remember what happened before you fell asleep?” John asks, not moving from his spot and thus not letting Stiles get up.

There’s a pregnant pause, then Stiles frowns. “I was out. Came in. Saw the light, wanted to see if you were awake. Saw you on the floor. What happened?”

What Stiles doesn’t say is: I was in a fight with a five creatures, almost got a heart-attack when I saw the lights on because I thought I was caught. Stiles had, of course, remembered John was not his dad. Thank the _graces_.

John elects to ignore his questions. “Are you having pain in your neck, chest, abdomen or limbs?”

Stiles frowns. “My head hurts, but that’s about it. What was I hit with?”

“A bat,” John says then presses a hand to the middle of Stiles’ chest when he tries lifting himself up. “You should lay down for now.”

For a moment Stiles is confused. John is not acting like himself. Stiles can’t tell how, or why, but the instincts he’d built up over three hellish years of living on Beacon Hills, and far more looking at criminal wrap sheets, tells him something is wrong.

“Was it a robbery?” Stiles inquires.

He needs to know how much John knows because -- shit, Stiles remembers. He left his bat by the doors. He’d thought he’d say goodnight then run up to his room. With a dawning realization, Stiles also realizes that his scent is definitely not covered. The stench he smelled _is_ coming from him.

He blinks at John. He’s practically on top of Stiles. He knows that, at least, the werewolf can hear his heartbeat speeding up.

“Yes.”

“Well did you get a look at them?” Stiles demands.

Maybe, he can play obtuse. That has worked sometimes. It usually catches up with him, but now it’s important to extricate himself from potentially dangerous claw-zone. He really doesn’t want to be clawed again, and definitely not by John.

John inhales then says, “You’re a hunter.”

It rips a hole in sound, Stiles’ thoughts falling quiet to the main one: ‘Well, shit.’ His heart, which had been beating in an unsteady rhythm now jack-rabbits.

“Uh,” Stiles says smartly. That came out of the left field. He doesn’t exactly know how to tell John, convincingly, that no he isn’t, not technically, because he expects a claw to the face before he can speak.

But it doesn’t come. Instead, John waits, patient, while Stiles tries not to move, in fact tries to do the opposite of what he wants to do and relaxes, until he’s lying prone on the floor. Still, John waits.

The silence stretches between them. John’s dark eyes only seem bigger and more serious, calm with a cold sort of fury. Stiles says, “Interesting how you’re particularly threatening when you’re quiet.”

“Were you sent to deal with me?” John fires back.

“Uh no, dude. I didn’t even know you were a werewolf until I was like, on your doorstep. And uh, no I’m not a hunter. I’m just in a pack.”

John looks at Stiles for a long moment. At this point Stiles has had a lot of staredowns: with witches, with fae, with most angry werewolves that ever came close to Beacon Hills and definitely all hunters. Nothing even comes into the _realm_ of John’s stare. He may not be his dad, he may not be a dad at all, but he has certainly perfected that look. It’s either that, or a combination of Derek’s look but if he were actually capable of cold murder, and Stiles would rather not think about that.

Unfortunately, what that kind of look makes Stiles do, is blabber.

“No, seriously you can listen to my heartbeat okay? I found out about this whole werewolf thing like, back in the first year of high school. Since then, a lot of stuff happened in Beacon Hills from hunters to bloodcaps so you can imagine. Anyways, got sucked into it since my best friend was turned and we ended up taking on some alpha pack--”

“You smell of mountain ash and wolfsbane.”

Stiles winces. “Uh, yeah. I mean, how else am I supposed to exactly protect myself from magical shit?”

John lifts an eyebrow. “It’s not _war_.”

Stiles laughs dryly, feeling his voice click. Maybe John should tell that to the Coven that’s after him. And all the dead he’s left back in Beacon Hills. “It definitely feels that way. We have a magical emergency every two months or so. It’s _exhausting_.”

John’s face remains inexpressive, though the weight he’d been putting on Stiles’ chest lightens. “Why did you need to bring it _here_?”

Stiles frowns. “I’m...always ready, John.” _Duh,_ he wants to clip on but he feels he’s still not out of warm water. What he does, is resort to complaining. He _does_ feel awful. “Ugh, I feel sick.”

John lifts off of him and stands. Immediately, Stiles rolls and gets his legs under him.

“I’ll get you tylenol and some ice. Lay down.”

Stiles doesn’t listen to him. He stands, wavers on his legs, then stabilizes himself. Promptly, he bends over and vomits.

Right, Stiles thinks. He was hit over the head with a bat. He must have a concussion. He goes through his ‘a bad guy hits you over the head starter pack’ ABCs and realizes John asked him all the right questions.

Stiles stares at the floor beneath him. Stiles really, really wants to go back home, not stare at his own bile on a wooden floor he could never afford.

Then, Stiles notices something else. Blood. A trail of it. He freezes, tracing it over to a small puddle.

“John,” he asks, voice quiet. “Where’s Daisy?”

#### -

Some things, Stiles has learned to do mechanically. He always check his backseat before driving, carries around extra adderall wrapped in cellophane around his knee, has at least a knife on him at all times and most importantly, always calls Derek the moment something happens.

Stiles doesn’t call Derek. He gets a bucket of water mixed with bleach and scrubs his own mess and the blood. It’s depressing that at this point he knows how to clean blood. However, he’s downright heartbroken that it’s Daisy’s.

The bastards, he thinks whoever they are, killed a dog. A _puppy_ . Who _does_ that? What the _fuck_ ? And his bat is gone. Stiles would like to believe John spirited it away somewhere, but John is decidedly a werewolf and thus incapable of even getting close to mountain ash, not to mention _move_ it. Things are just getting shittier as they go.

In his room, Stiles plugs his phone to charge and goes to take a shower. The tylenol is attempting to numb the pain, but the back of his head still feels tender. For a lingering moment he thinks about what the fuck he’s going to do but then he relaxes into the warm spray. One thing at a time.

When he’s done he activates a healing rune. It shines a soft pale-green color from his abdomen as he dresses in his casual clothes. His one good pair of slacks he’d worn last night is in the laundry but the shirt’s in the trash. Too much blood, the sleeves shredded from his encounter with a striga.

John will want him to leave, that’s for certain. Stiles may not be a threat but he’s lied to him and family, as he’s learned painfully well, doesn’t do that. The thing is, Stiles panicked. There’s no other explanation. He realized John was a werewolf, alone, grieving, and he smelled of Derek. He’d been wearing _Derek_ ’s sweater.

The shitty thing is, Stiles can’t leave. Not yet.

John is dressed and making sandwiches when Stiles finds his way to the kitchen. Most of his wounds are patched up by now, only scabs remaining. Werewolf healing, Stiles sighs with relief.

They eat in silence. John doesn’t even look at him. It’s unnerving. He doesn’t know what to expect. There’s tension in the air, thick enough to cut it with a knife, but John just doesn’t do anything.

After John clears the dishes, Stiles bites the bullet. “Okay so I’m going to assume that you’re not going to call the cops?”

“You should pack and go back to California. I’ll book you the next ticket out.”

“Wait, what?” Stiles yelps. John...doesn’t explain. Stiles thinks he really needs to get out more, hang out with people who aren’t pack. Somebody not talking over him is fucking jarring.

He takes a breath. “You’ve not called the cops. You said it was a robbery.”

John blinks.

“Come on you know dad is a sheriff. You know that now I know you either know the people who did this or you know how to find them, and I also know werewolves do _not_ back down from a fight.”

“Oh,” John lifts an eyebrow. “All werewolves?”

Stiles takes the bait. “It’s like the shift takes that last self-preservation brain cell out of you. No offence.”

John remains quiet. Exasperated, Stiles says, “You’re avoiding the law. You know who did this. Or you know where you’ll find them...you’ve got their scent don’t you?”

When Jon remains quiet Stiles huffs and says, “So what you’re going to burst in, go all wolf-y rage, hulk smash and then what? Just go back to the regularly scheduled programme?”

John’s blinks again. His eyebrows lift slightly. Stiles tries to put meaning to that. If he’s learned to read Derek “Man-Pain” Hale, then he’s going to learn to read his uncle. Uncle, he can pretty clearly imagine doing something reckless.

“You’re in a pack,” John says after a while.

“Okay?”

“You should go back to it.” His eyes are resolute. “You went out killing yourself.”

Stiles can’t believe _John_ is calling pot a kettle in a situation that concerns _murder_ when he just admitted he wants to do pretty much that to people who killed Daisy. He isn’t Peter Hale, Jesus almighty.

“It was self-defense,” Stiles replies on reflex, without thinking too much about it. Then he realizes he’s just lied again.

John looks at him and after a while Stiles crumbles. “I had some witches on my back. Turns out they don’t look kindly to you burning down a nemeton. Who knew? Anyway, I didn’t even know the North-East Witch’s Association even existed, much less that they supervise their North-California office and that, technically, they were in charge of the nemeton. Not that anyone ever told us. Not that the nemeton was particularly a good thing. It fucking had a demon sealed. What was _I_ supposed to do? Not protect my pack?”

“You burned down a nemeton,” John repeats.

Frankly, Stiles is surprised John even knows what a nemeton is. The witches were certainly all uppity about it, but rarely do other creatures get involved in magical bullshit to paraphrase Jackson’s words. Ironic, coming from him, Stiles thinks.

Pretty early on, Stiles had figured out the creatures were drawn to it after it awakened. His pack was either going to deal with a bi-monthly murder fest or Stiles was going to do something about the nemeton. Turns out, he was the only one who could, being the only magically-equipped human in the pack.

One unforeseen element was his dad stuffing him into an airplane to New York two days after he’d done it, so Stiles couldn’t confirm that it actually worked. He still doesn’t know if burning it down did anything. Derek says that he doesn’t feel anything from the burn out stump, but he’d not felt the demon either.

“Now that they know who did it, witches will be particularly persistent,” John tells him.

Stiles groans. “On a scale from fae to bloodhounds-- yeah I didn’t think so either. You dealt with them before?”

John seems be reminded of something, but he says quickly enough, “On an occasion or two.”

“I’m sure we could come up to some understanding,” Stiles says but he doesn’t really believe it.

He’d managed to escape headquarters but the witch he’d been talking to chased him into the street regardless of secrecy, sent strigas, shishiga and other spirits Stiles did not recognize after him. He’d managed to avoid them until she’d gotten smart and sent jorogumos which cornered him near the fifth street. Stiles had not expected them; thought they’d stick with their own people but turns out the witches seem to share underlings or something.

They want him dead. Or worse. Stiles had barely escaped via subway.

“Falling in dept to them is dangerous but...they might consider a parlay. I could do something for them to even out the score.”

“Shouldn’t your alpha be dealing with this?” John asks.

Stiles slaps his own forehead. Right, Derek. Knowing him, he’s probably halfway on a rampaging path to New York. He dashes from the kitchen, climbs the stairs twice at the time, and practically trips his way into his room. His grabs his phone, turns it on, and waits with dread.

It’s well into the morning and Stiles has missed his check-in.

Sure enough, he has five missed calls. Two from Derek, two from his dad. One from Scott. Messages. A lot of then. Mostly themed, ‘If you’re not dead text back.’ That’s Erica.

He calls Derek first, but he doesn’t pick up. He dials again, and then once more, before he says into the voicemail, “Oh for fuck’s sake, Derek, I know you’re probably freaking out so I’m fine, you definitely do _not_ have to come to New York. As in, you should absolutely _stay_ in California. When you get this voicemail call me. Or text me. Do _not_ freak out.”

Then, he comes back to the kitchen, for all intents and purposes with a curled tail between his legs.

  
“The witches were chasing you from California weren’t they.”

Stiles looks at John, who’s nursing his coffee. He sighs. “No. The local druid said the witches could help, and that I should have probably announced myself to the North-California Coven by now anyway. But before I could do anything, I was here so. I went to the headquarters.”

John looks at him as if he were stupid. Stiles shares the sentiment.

“Oh, by the way, could I please get my bat back? It’s kind of dangerous. Actually, really dangerous.”

John raises an eyebrow. Surprise. Then it really isn’t with him. Stiles isn’t surprised, and yet he still feels his stomach sinking. That is definitely not good. In fact, that’s terrible.

“Yeah, I was kind of afraid you were going to say that. Those assholes who attacked us took my bat. I need it back.”

John looks at Stiles. “Being attached to weapons is not wise.”

Stiles suppresses a shrill bout of laughter. That’s what Chris Argent told him while he was training him. Stiles wonders if John would be offended if he knew he was being compared to a hunter.

“It’s made of mountain ash, soaked in wolfsbane and, the last I checked, has jorogumo poison dripping off of it. It also may or may not be cursed.”

For once, John’s expression changes. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it changes for the worse. He actually frowns. So he knows how catastrophic it would be for someone to have such a weapon.

“You used it as a medium between the nemeton and you.”

“Technically, I used it as a ‘wand’. So...yeah.”

John opens his mouth, and he says what Stiles least expected. “Did Claudia tell you about her family?”

Stiles feels his heart sinking even though he fights to maintain and even tone of voice. “No. I told you, I found out on accident. Meeting Gretta...well I hoped that it was an accident.”

“Alphas can never be accidents. They’re made,” John retorts.

Stiles knows, intimately, the truth about that. However, admitting that Gretta was a pack alpha, that his mother _knew_ about this world and never said anything, is far more difficult than hoping for a different outcome. However the facts are there now, brought out in the open.

His mother knew and was, at one point, a part of a pack. Human, but still pack. It opens so many possibilities, rises so many questions, Stiles’ head begins to pound.

Something must show on his face because Jon’s expression softens. However, there are no soothing words on his tongue.

“I’m going to go after the men that too Daisy from me. I’m going to find them and I’m going to kill them. Can you deal with that?”

Stiles’ eyebrows dance on his forehead. “You mean like, morally or philosophically or--”

“I mean can you stomach knowing I am a killer.”

Stiles takes a breath, swallows. Holy shit, he thinks, John is serious. His brain does not compute. He is blue-screening right then and there, in from of John, whose frown is growing the longer Stiles stays quiet. Finally, he croaks out, “What? Wait, no, I mean _what_?”

“You’re freaking out,” John states. How very _him_.

“No. Yes. No, when I freak out, it’s not pretty. This is...confusion.”

Because, really, he can’t _imagine_ John killing _anyone_ . John’s like, his favorite uncle. He knows the whole story: being in the Marines, meeting his aunt, finally settling down. It’s the only romantic story he can tolerate. He’s known John for the past five years of the life. John’s taught him how to drive, but like in the cool way. He let him _drive his car_ . Even Derek’s still on the edge about it -- emergencies only. Once, he got really sad about a plant dying. He’d bought it for Aunt Helen. A _plant_.

“I mean...” Stiles lets out a long sigh. “Most people I _know_ are killers.”

It had always come down to that in Beacon Hills. No matter how much Scott had tried to play the good guy, no matter how tired they’ve all gotten of doing it, it always came down to killing the threat or getting killed.

John nods. His eyes fall down to the tables, fingers passing over the edge. He’s thinking about something. He even looks pained, much to Stiles’ concern. It’s as if John is weighing out if he should tell Stiles something or not.

Finally, he says, “I used to kill people.”

“I know you were in the Marines, John,” Stiles says, confused once again. “I’m...not judging you on that. But are you sure this is a smart thing to do?”

It seems kind of overkiller, definitely no puns intended.

He watches as John’s face shift into a cool, casual sort of cruelty, heat draining from the room. “It’s the _only_ thing to do.”

Stiles wishes he could go home. At least his voice is steady when he fakes his nonchalance. “So another werewolf will be bossing me around. Nothing new.”

John’s mouth doesn’t quirk but he doesn’t look as tense when he says, “There are things I need to do.”

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> thank you all for the amazing feedback<3

Aurelio's is the same as the last time John had seen it five years ago. Aurelio himself has barely changed. He was always a competent but nervous man. John likes him, regardless of that, as much as he can like someone in their line of business. He respects him.

“I’m going to talk with the owner,” John tells Stiles who shrugs. 

He finds Aurelio easily enough, and it seems he’s been expecting John. The drink is a kind of peace offering he’d always welcomed John with before his retirement, only now it tells him his car was, at one point, in the shop. 

Credit to him, Aurelio doesn’t waste his time. “Iosef Tarasov nicked it.”

“Viggo’s son,” John says, and Aurelio nods. 

He’d never seen the boy before. Viggo had kept his family far away from fixers like him. For a moment, John’s anger gets the better of him. What he’s done for Viggo and his family, from the indignities of forging a blood pact, the impossible odds, to the suicide mission even for a werewolf -- it had built Tarasov an empire. All of that has just been thrown in his face. 

He told Stiles he was going to kill someone. Now, he knows who, and knows there will be an army waiting for him. However, most importantly, now Jon is certain.

Aurelio was never a nervous talker but he bumbles through his explanation now. “He came by, asked for a new VIP number and papers. I recognized the car immediately. Turned him away, but his uncle owns a chop shop in their territory so he’ll still get it ‘pressed.”

John appreciates it, even though it’s inconvenient. If he had let the car stay, John could have taken it now. 

Aurelio continues chattering unprompted. “He talked shit about dropping in on you and a house guest. Slapped the smirk right off his face. His punk-ass has been acting up ever since Viggo’s territory expanded. Last I heard they were hitting up a gang down near Brooklyn, encroaching on their territory. Iosef’s itching for a fight.”

“I thought Viggo was more into politics these days.” Spreading influence in Atlanta, trafficking drugs and bodies, paid the bills more than gangwars. After John, they didn’t have anyone to go to war with anyway.

“Something’s got him itching about this gang though. Don’t know why. They own a couple of bars, couple of dealers, a chop shop. Nothing anybody needs to be concerned with.”

John nods and tucks the information away for later. He might need to go searching for Iosef. However, he has bigger concerns now. 

“So what are you going to do?” 

Just then he hears the scuffing of Sties’ all-stars. He’d been typing on his phone furiously and it seems it has him agitated. He’s been poking around the cars too which, no doubt, has Aurelio's men alarmed. 

He’d taken John’s resolve far too easily. He wonders what has to happen to change the fifteen-year-old he’d once known. He wonders if Stiles had been unmade, just like John had been unmade and his behaviour now is nothing but a show. He already knows Stiles can lie. 

The connotations of the comparison are worrying. However, Belarus was a long time ago, when John carried a different name and he hadn’t had his ticket out yet. Stiles is not as unmoored like him. He has a pack, for better, John thinks, or for worse.

“That’s uh the guest?” Aurelio nods towards Stiles. He’s watching Stiles now like he’s a loose zoo animal. Which, considering he’s a curious if incredibly clumsy kid, is a good estimation. 

“Kids,” John shrugs. “I need a ride.”

Aurelio nods and stands at once. “We have a couple of finished cars out back.” He seems to think something over, and looks at Stiles again. He makes a pained expression. “Please, if you could--”

John, unfortunately, understands. “Stiles,” he calls and the boy quietly sighs and gladly comes to him. Bored, John realizes. Impatient. He’s eighteen, John reminds himself. Helen would be heartbroken for getting her family into his business. But then, she would also love him for protecting her family. 

The kid burned down a nemeton. John had to re-evaluate Stiles the moment he’d been told. It’s not that nemetons are sacred, though they are, or that they’re powerful, though they really are, but because any harm come to them usually means that the person who does it, and their subsequent offsprings, are cursed. But Stiles doesn’t looks particularly cursed, nor does he smell it. He smells like dove shower-gel they always kept in the guess bedroom and like a storm with a sickly-sweet smell cloying around him. It seems he’s stopped masking his scent now that John has found him out. 

One thing is certain. He’s accustomed to violence. John wonders what kind of alpha he has that he’d unperturbed by murder. He’d just listened to John, in the kitchen. John considers what Gretta would say, knowing her grandson was in the know, in the pack, despite her daughter. He wonders what Helen would do. 

They follow Aurelio to the back of the shop where rows of finished processed cars wait to be picked up. None of them are his Mustang, but any will do. 

“You have a preference?” he asks Stiles. 

“Uh, I might end up bleeding in it so. Whatever has a comfortable back seat?” 

Aurelio barks a short laugh. “Don’t know about that, but I do have a Chevelle.”

“It’s fine, we’ll take it.” If nothing else, John has always liked American classics.

Later, on their way back to the house, Stiles driving shotgun, he says, “Some people are going to come by the house later tonight. With guns.”

“How do you know?”

“I used to work for the father of the man who stole my car. Russian mafia.” He glances at Stiles. “I was a fixer.”

“A fixer. Totally not imagining Goodfellas  _ at all _ . And you’re a werewolf. And want to kill people.” Stiles takes a breath, and exhales it, nodding. “Okay so, I reserve the right to freak out about this later. Like,  _ later _ later. Jesus. You werewolves always seem to draw the worst fucking lot in life.”

_ Isn’t that the truth? _ , John thinks. 

“What do you want me to do?” Stiles asks. 

“Nothing. Stay in your room. I’ll take care of it.” 

“Right, right. I can totally do that,” Stiles replies. Lie. 

“You don’t have a weapon. You don’t have training. These are professionals. Let me handle it,” John says. 

“Uh, I’m sorry, but that literally goes against every fiber of my being. Because, I know you’re a werewolf, but you’re also uncle John so. Yeah. Plus--” he says, holding a fingure up as if John was going to talk over him, “--I do in fact have training. From a hunter. With actual  _ guns _ .”

John doesn’t have a reply to that. He has switched off. Whatever constituted as ‘Uncle John’ now isn’t present, and won’t be until Iosef Tarasov is dead. 

“Oh and also,” Stiles says when they arrive and he’s flailing outside of the Chevelle. “The jorogumo venom on my clothes melted through the metal and plastic of the washing machine. Sorry.”

####  -

Winston is not going to be pleased, John thinks as he finishes making a reservation at the Continental. He’s already called Charlie’s services, so now he only needs to pack. 

Upstairs in the living room, he hears Stiles’ heartbeat slowing down. 

John had given him a gun,  _ just in case _ , and instructions to stay in his room. What Stiles did was take care of the kitchen while John cleaned up the living room. He killed five. Most of them with a knife and, if he’s correct about the scent in the air, magic. Then, once it was over, he ran to the first bathroom to retch.

He hears, “Relax Stiles, not your first rodeo. Oh actually that’s cool! Gross..and cool.”

John takes care to properly packs his weapons, clothes and coins. He hears cars approaching. Charlie has always been quick. He goes up to open the doors and sees Stiles is on the couch, legs kicked over the backrest where, John is pretty sure, Gretta had stank up with her perfume. He’s texting someone furiously. 

“Good evening, John.”

“Charlie,” John nods and opens the doors wider. 

“You look good. And here I’d feared you’d left all this behind.”

Charlie and his cleaners come in and John lets them work. Stiles occasionally glances at the people working, but whatever is on his phone is more important than his curiosity which is a first. John can’t relax with so many people in his home. He stands with folded arms in a corner, supervising, even though Charlie has been doing this long enough to need no supervision. 

“Babysitting?” Charlie asks, an eyebrow raised. John never did do bodyguard work. 

John doesn’t know if it’s better to lie or tell the truth. In the end he shrugs. “Something like that.”

Once Charlie is done and packed up, Stiles finally looks up for his phone just in time to watch John pay Charlie on his way out of the doors.

“Holy shit,” he says once Jon walks back to the living room. “I wish  _ we _ had something like this. Do you know how agonizing cleaning blood from marble is?”

John had never considered that Stiles had to see dead bodies before, but of course he did. He smells of blood. He reeked of it, so much so it’s settled into his scent.

“Hunters?” John asks. 

Stiles nods. “Hunters, werewolves, selkies, kelpies, you name it. You know actually I think the house might be cursed...that or Derek. But thinking that is just depressing.” He seems to have an argument with himself then says, “We usually bury the bodies in the preserve. First wanted to salt and burn but...figured fungi work fast too. Let mother nature--” he waves his hands around, “you know do her thing. In any case, if I’m on clean up duty that week it’s hell.”

Clean up duty? Stiles has said that attacks happen often. It seems that living in the particular hell that is Beacon Hills has normalized something for Stiles which John has always kept separate from the real world. The two seem to have come together for Stiles. 

He wonders if it’s normal discussing methods of body disposal. Probably not.

“If you have anything to pack, get it. We’re going to a hotel.” 

In less than ten minutes Stiles is ready to go and gets in the car.

“By the way, what did you pay the clean-up guy with?” Stiles asks, sounding morbidly curious.

It’s not smart bringing Stiles with him. It’s the worst possible idea. What John plans to do is reckless and Tarasov has seen Stiles’ face. He can’t afford to have Stiles as a weakness. But Stiles is weaponless with witches on his tail, and possibly in danger should anyone find him.

John’s made his decision on it. There’s no space for guilt; he can’t afford to be unfocused or sentimental. He can’t be concerned. 

He fishes out a golden coin and hands it over tentatively then starts the car. ”The Continental is a hotel where people like me come to unwind between jobs. It’s a safe zone. No jobs allowed. Be on guard.”

Stiles is squinting in the uneven lighting as he tries to inspect the picture on the coin. “You mean...there’s actually an underground  _ society _ of  _ assassins?” _

“Is it so different from being aware of the supernatural community?”

He looks up. “Uh..yes? Knowing there’s more species than just humans is one thing, but like an actual society of crime is....Godfather levels of unbelievable.” 

John can hardly see the difference. The supernatural society has its own rules, it’s own institutions which hold checks and balances. Like the Coven. Technically, they are well within their rights to hunt Stiles. What he did was reckless, from start to finish. 

“I had an account opened in the Continental before I retired. Every hitman does. It’s one of the hubs. There are rules to keep people in check. We govern ourselves.”

He notices the coin glinting then it disappears somewhere in one of Stiles’ sleeves. He tastes magic on his tongue.

“Wow,” Stiles says, making a face. “I think that’s literally the most terrifying sentence you ever said to me and the second most terrifying sentence I ever heard in my life.”

John sighs. “How’s your head?”

Stiles looks at him for a moment, then, for some reason laughs. “Oh you mean physically! It’s okay, I’ve had worse. Iosef hits like a twelve year old.”

John elects to believe him. Whoever swung at John has a much heavier hand. “Don’t speak unless spoken to. And in God’s name, don’t do anything stupid.”

“Fine,” Stiles says making an innocent face.

Stiles still smells like blood when they pull up and Jon extends his hand demanding the coin back. There is no way it will go unnoticed inside the hotel. 

He doesn’t look apologetic when he grins and plops it back into Jon’s hand, even though it appears as if it had fallen out of hand. It reminds Jon too closely of leprechauns. Once, he’d made the mistake of underestimating them. Back then, he’d only known the horrors of the creatures he’d come with to America: the zwodziasz, the likhoradka, blednitsa.

Ruska Roma had not discriminated on whom they’d gotten out of Belarus as long as they were useful. At the time John had been only  _ vukodlak _ , and least useful.

He puts the coin back inside his pocket and they exit the car. 

The Continental, from the outside, looks just like it had always looked. Inside, however, it seems someone finally forked over the money for renovations. Charon, the true face of the Continental, stands at the reception desk, ethereal and unaging. 

He notes the unfamiliar faces as he passes, and realizes there’s more he does know. Perkins for example. 

“Good seeing you again, John,” Perkins says, in that sort of way that a spider might bow. 

“Perkins,” John nods. He never did like her. 

She glances at Stiles but goes to the lifts. 

Charon doesn’t need names to recognize old customers. He remembers everything. John doesn’t know how he feels about him remembering Stiles. 

His pleasant voice has always incited a certain calmness within John. A way he knows he’s on safe grounds. “I have you for two nights.”

“Depending on business, it may be more,” John says.

“Of course, sir.”

“So when did the old place get a face lift?” John asks. 

“Around four years ago. But I assure you, sir, she really hasn’t changed much.”

“Same owner?”

“Same owner.”

Winston. He is definitely not going to be happy then. But John can deal with him after he gets Stiles situated, after he’s certain he’s safe. John forks over two coins and Charon accepts them with all of his centuries-crafted grace.

“Room, 818. Do you need any more assistance?”

John looks at Stiles and his terrible clothes. “Not right now.”

Charon’s voice echoes when he says, “It’s a pleasure having you with us again, Mr. Wick.”

John nods and pushes Stiles towards the elevators.

He had reserved a two-bed bedroom. At least in Continental, John and Stiles are safe from Tarasov and from the Coven. Somewhere the two worlds overlap, and there certain rules apply. Charon is not just for show. He’s the sphinx guarding the doors only much, much more powerful. The Coven knows about the Continental just like Winston knows about the Coven. 

“Holy shit,” Stiles says the moment they’re inside the room. “That was so...suave. And formal. And cool. And weird. What the actual hell.”

“There are rules. Formality. Respect. Of a kind.” John feels uncomfortable explaining more. “They provide services for us. For pay.”

Before, John didn’t notice but now, in sterile close quarters, the scent of blood on Stiles is overwhelming. It should have faded when it dried. John’s nostrils flare and he gets closer. 

“Uh, John?” Stiles asks, leaning away from John, even though there’s nowhere to go. 

“You smell like blood. Like your blood.” And it smell like a lot of it. “Were you injured?”

The jorogumo venom had melted through the metal and plastic of the washer, but Stiles had said he was fine. John had trusted him. Perhaps he should have investigated.

He watches as Stiles’ face dances between half-said lies. He flails with his arms, huffs, says, “Are  _ you _ injured?” like a petulant child which he really isn’t anymore. Then, when he exhausts himself, he finally admits, “It’s nothing serious.”

John gets the urge to boot him to the closest airport then and there. It passes, transforming into an urge to yell at him. What John does is sigh. Then he calls down to reception to request for a doctor. 

“You’re...not yelling at me,” Stiles notes, somewhat surprised. 

“What use is it?” John replies. “The doctor will come to patch you up.”

Obviously, Stiles has never learned the importance of sharing this kind of information. It’s different when you’re not alone. Back with the Marine Corp., it meant telegraphing to others how much you could and couldn’t do, that your health and getting to a doctor, was of importance. It was no use hiding it then keeling over when you had to cover someone. It’s disconcerting that Stiles would think that’s normal.

“Oh no,” Stiles says, “I definitely do not need a doctor. John come on.”

John places a hand on his shoulder, this close to shaking him. “This isn’t a game. You’re going to get patched up so I can rely on you, if I need you. We could have taken care of this sooner if you told me.”

“What’s a little stab wound, I mean in all this--”

“You are human. You could be concussed. You were  _ stabbed _ .”

There’s a knock on the doors and John walks over to let the doctor in. “And,” he continues after closing the doors, “you went fighting a jorogumo. Now sit in the chair.”

Stiles looks at him defiantly. Then, grumbling, he says under his breath, “Worse than Derek I swear.” 

He looks at John again as if he was meant to be overheard. John doesn’t mind being compared to the illustrious Derek which, John assumes, is his alpha. 

The doctor places his kit on the table and says, “What’s the issue?”

“A possible concussion and a stab wound.” He’d not heard any of the guns going off in the kitchen.

The doctor sighs and when Stiles sits in the chair he inspects his scalp. 

“Strip,” the doctor says and Stiles hesitates. He looks at John, then at the doctor, and finally plucks his two-sizes-too-large hoodie and unceremoniously dumps it over the back of the chair. 

John had seen hints of tattoos around his neck but he’d not expected the mass of scars maring Stiles’ torso. John sees claw marks wide enough to be werewolf, stab wounds, bite wounds, burn marks. None are recent; how Stiles’ skin wasn’t burnt by the jorogumo venom is another mystery which John doubts he’ll figure out. 

Some of Stiles tattoos are broken up by the scars, some re-done over them, and rare ones are un-touched. The most alarming thing is that the large gauze over Stiles’ belly, saturated with blood. The doctor plucks it off, revealing a slash that’s already halfway to healing.

Stiles is not a werewolf, true, but John bets that the fact he belongs to a pack has accelerated his healing which means that the wound was much, much worse. A knife from the kitchen then. Stiles should have told him.

He’s giving John the ‘ _ I told you _ ’ look while John tries to remember where he’d seen similar tattoos. Most of them have knots in them, loops. It’s not witchcraft, but something similar. 

The doctor works quietly patching him up, then tells Stiles to create a circle with his hands in front of him and look at him with one eye through it. Stiles does as instructed and quick as an arrow, the doctor plucks something from the air. 

“You are cursed,” the doctor says and shows, between his two fingers, a black clump of hair.

“What...kind of cursed?” Stiles asks. 

The doctor looks at him as if he is slow. “This one seems to come from a shishiga or a dziwozona. Either she finds you, you drown, or get lost and wander until exhaustion. Whichever you want to bet on first.” 

John isn’t surprised but it seems neither is Stiles. “May I have it?” 

The doctor shrugs, placed it into an empty pill bottle, then hands it over to him.

John follows the doctor out and pays him. Once they’re alone, John says, “That wound was potentially lethal.”

“That’s why I have magic to fix me up,” Stiles replies, carefully re-dressing. 

John does not want to be concerned but he is. Stiles is far too young to be carrying so much history on his skin. Nobody sane would. Not a human. Not someone who could just leave. 

A chilling thought courses through John at that moment. Maybe he  _ can’t _ .

“The coven sent shishigas after you. I bet they sent marudas as well.” Shishigas were one thing, their usual repertoire was to harass people. Marudas, on the other hand, were made to steal: bodies, souls, hearts. Children. It’s worse than John thought. 

Stiles shrugs. “Nothing I’m not used to.” He takes a breath, and the air fills with the scent of magic, though John has no idea what Stiles is doing with it.

“Stiles,” John says walking over. “What’s the name of your pack?”

“Hale. My alpha’s Derek Hale.” Stiles says, “I know why you’re asking. Usually a human can’t feel a pack bond. After one too close encounter with death, Derek and I got bound. I get the cool scars and trauma, he gets a wound opening up in his belly in the middle of the grocery store.”

John realizes what he’s been smelling the whole time. “You’re an emissary.”

No wonder Stiles can’t leave the pack  _ or  _ Beacon Hills. Of course Stiles could destroy a nemeton. It was in his and his alpha’s territory, and he’s connected with his alpha. Not witchcraft but magic. Wildly, incredibly discouraged by the Assembly, type of magic. 

John isn’t the one to question means. What he does question is Stiles’ alpha, who’d allowed things to escalate to that point. The Coven, the Assembly, and the Embassy are there to take care of these things. 

“Why didn’t you go to the Embassy? They would have helped.”

He sees confusion on Stiles’ face, and feels his stomach dropping. 

“I’m assuming that’s a code for something?” Stiles asks, confirming John’s suspicions. Stiles, in fact, doesn’t know anything about the community. He’s been winging it the whole three years in Beacon Hills. Yet, he’s still  _ alive _ .

Jon has never thought he would be having this conversation with anyone. He can’t believe he’s having it now with Stiles, who  _ should have known better _ . 

“The Embassy keeps an eye on everyone, even the Coven no matter how volatile they are. They’re harsh, but fair. Especially with something as complicated as the nemeton.”

He sees Stiles realize what John’s telling him. He shakes his head and says, “But that’s just in New York.”

“No,” John says, sitting on the bed. “It’s everywhere.”

If Gretta knew she would riot. At least he finds that kind of amusing.  _ Claudia _ would riot. She never told her son about the community. She never  _ wanted _ him to know if her behaviour was any evidence. He found out by  _ accident _ and he crossed most norms of a traditional werewolf pack. 

The silence lingers only as much as it takes Stiles to digest new information and the reality of the fact that he could have gone to someone, asked for help, and wouldn’t have been alone dealing with the mess in Beacon Hills.

John considers what to say as well. He can’t believe that an eighteen-year-old is an emissary. He can’t believe that an alpha  _ let  _ him. Moreover, he isn’t sure that Stiles really understands the connotations of it now that he knows he, in fact, has sparse information.

In the end, John says, “And you say werewolves are fucked.”   
  


Stiles looks shocked then starts laughing. “Yeah you’re right.”

He fidgets with his hands then asks, “Mom knew about this, right? Is this...why didn’t she want me and dad to know?”

John shrugs. He never did find out. “Gretta disowned her for marrying someone not in the know of the community. That’s as much as Helen ever said.”

Stiles nods but he doesn’t looks satisfied by the answer. In the end, all John can do is move forward.

“We should go down to the tailor.” 

Stiles nods. Then asks, “What for?”

John looks at him for a long moment. “You aren’t bullet-proof are you?”

Stiles has a strange expression on his face the whole ride down to the tailor shop, and it grows into delight the moment he’s pushed in front of a mirror. ‘ _ I cannot believe this _ ,’ he mouths into the mirror. John ignores him in favor of paying up front and selecting proper materials.

John’s bending the rules heavily with using the facilities for Stiles but as far as nobody stops him he still has the green light. 

It’s also amusing to watch Stiles fumble while the tailor takes his measurements, before he slips on the premade mark up shirt and coat. The tailor and seamstress, used to working with professionals, are more amused by the fact John is  _ letting _ him. They keep glancing at John until he finally bends and says, “You do know you have to stay still.”

“Uhh, John, no offence, but this is like...James Bond suiting up scene. That or My Fair Lady, and I don’t think either of us appreciates that kind of implication.”

“Unlike James Bond’s suits, this one weighs a bit more,” John says. He’s not really partial to kevlar suits until he really needs them. For instance, he won’t need his own when going up against Tarasov. It’s not a necessary investment.

“I can’t believe a bullet-stopping suit  _ actually _ exists. Like, zero enchantments and all,” Stiles says, trying very hard not to flinch as the seamstress makes adjustments on the mark up.

In a matter of a few minutes the tailors explains what the buttons, cut, and occasion mean in their world, and he watches, with sick fascination, as Stiles absorbs the information and reproduces it in fairly easy succession. It means he actually listened to what he was told, and understood it enough to make a decision. That is a useful trait in John’s ex-profession. 

He watches as Stiles is poked and prodded until finally the seamstress says, “We’ll send the suit up once we’re done.”

Once they’re back in the room, after ordering room service, John says, “I need to step out. Stay here. Sleep, for once.”

“No promises,” Stiles sighs and plops onto the bed. A moment later he’s back on his phone, tapping at it aggressively. “What’s the plan of action anyways? We didn’t talk about that.”

“Does ‘do as you’re told’ suffice?” 

Stiles gives him a look through narrowed eyes. “Funny.”

“Thank you,” John replies. “I’m looking for information on Iosef. Once I find him, I’ll go after him. Deal with him. Deal with the bat. Then we can deal with the witches.”

Stiles looks at him, though what’s going through his mind is beyond John. He says, “It’s just...that easy, isn’t it.”

“As these things tend to be, yes.” 

Stiles nods and returns to his phone.

John resists rolling his eyes and leaves for the bar. 

####  -

Winston, as he expected, is definitely not amused. It was too much hoping he would not get informed immediately. Instead of telling him where Iosef is, he gives John a lecture. That’s nothing new. However, the tone with which he speaks, is.

“What are you thinking, Jonathan, bringing a  _ cursed  _ civilian  _ emissary _ into the hotel?” Winston says, in that sort of Very Disappointed voice, John always imagined fathers had. 

“The Coven is after him,” John says. 

Winston shakes his hands. “Did he bring it up with the Embassy?”

“He destroyed a nemeton,” John adds. 

Winston’s eyebrows lift. They’re very heavy eyebrows. “You  _ know _ the rules Jonathan. No civilians. No matter how... impressive. He will do you no good against the Tarasovs.”

“He’s not...for them. It’s...personal.”

That truly shocks Winston. The last, and the first, time he’d mentioned something personal, it was retirement. They knew about Helen in vague strokes. He wanted to get married, and he wanted to leave. That was enough. He doesn’t want Stiles any closer to this hell than he already is. 

He leaves Winston to stew on it, while he does as he was recommended and grabs a drink. Addy’s working. He has not seen her for a long time, even before he retired. The story goes that Winston found her half-burned in an alley, hiding behind the Continental. A vampire doesn’t survive long without blood out in the sunshine. 

“John. God how long has it been, four years?” she smiles, flashing her golden eyes at him. She really is happy to see him, John thinks dumbly. He thought he made few friends in the business. 

“Five.” He brushes away her half-hearted try at condolences. He’s heard enough of them.

“I’ve never seen you like this. Vulnerable.” 

“How has it been going Addy?” he asks. If he remembers last, she’d always been involved in the community. Helping others like her. 

“Oh you know,” Addy shrugs. “The werewolves down on Vinegar Hill have been trying to sell booze without Assembly approval. Some commons have been pushing into our turf, and the Coven is up and about some kid who accidentally burned a nemeton. The usual.”

“Hard to imagine anyone doing that on accident,” John comments. He wants to know what the word on the street is. 

Addy laughs. “I know right? Not that the Coven has much to worry about. Vanja, you know, old as trees witch that has that bookstore on the corner of sixteenth? She says that nemetons, apparently, carry grudges and curse whoever harms them. They can just let him live out the rest of his two, three years. But you know how witches are.”

John grunts. Stubborn, bull-headed and immortal. The worst possible combination.

“But enough of that. You want the usual?”

“Please,” John nods. 

Bourbon arrives in a moment, and with it the address he’d asked for. Addy is smirking but John’s eyes trail over to Winston who simply nods. Approval or rather, forgiveness. Unfortunately, he doubts it will come without a price. 

He leaves at once, not even saying goodbye. 

Up in the room Stiles is not sleeping, but it does appear as if he’s somehow managed to cram himself into the space between the wall and the bed, legs up the wall. It seems that he’s gotten more energetic since the first time he’d come to the house, which is a somewhat pleasant change. He must have been injured right off the plane. 

Stiles cranes his neck and looks at him. “You got some good info. You have that determined look on your face. Still not telling me anything but that it’s russian mob?”

“You’re not coming with me,” John says immediately. Prevention is the best medicine.

The surprising, and suspicious, thing is that Stiles doesn’t argue. 

“I don’t appreciate that look either,” Stiles shoots back. “I’m waiting for the witches to text me what I need to do. Can’t really be in the middle of a shootout, and be like ‘yeah sorry, gotta go’. That’s just shitty.”

“Don’t go out of the room. Don’t open to anyone who knocks, unless it’s Charon. But he’ll announce himself. Or Winston. I need to dress.”

Stiles has a bemused smile on his face but he agrees. John gets ready and when he’s done, he says, “You’re not going to ask me anything?”

“My alpha, when I met him, was a monosyllabic asshole who communicated via eyebrows. What I mean to say is that, if you don’t want to tell me, I can’t make you and, more importantly, I don’t want to. If I understood anything, is that you’re a professional, and by the fact that people actually jump when they see you, I’m guessing you were good. So just...please don’t die?”

John blinks a couple of times, and then realizes he actually feels touched that Stiles said that. 

“Anyways, see you later,” Stiles says. 

John leaves without replying. What can he say to that?


	4. Chapter Four

John leaves with a quiet certainty of a man going to die. Stiles has seen that set of shoulders, determined face, the heavy gate, too many times in Derek, and he does not stop John just like he could never stop him. 

One thing that calms Stiles, though he is no less worried because John is family just like Derek is family, is that John very obviously belongs here in Continental. He is professional, however absurd it sounds. John might actually be able to take care of himself. More importantly, John has a plan; one thing that Derek has never had no matter how hard Stiles tried to shove it down his throat. It had always been a last-ditch effort for Derek to go in with sheer brute force. There’s no strategy in that.

Stiles lets out a very long sigh, looking up the ceiling. “This is fucked up,” he says to the ceiling. 

“This is fucked up,” he repeats later to Derek over the phone. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me about this Embassy shit, Der.”

Derek grunts. It’s not the first time Stiles had said that. In fact, he’d shouted it the moment the call connected. Derek had even apologised, which only told Stiles that he’d really fucked up. 

“In my defence,” Derek says now, “When we got to New York, Laura handled everything. I just went with her when she said she found a pack to help us through.”

They have another ten minutes of back and forth until Stiles has calmed down. 

“So, so fucked,” Stiles repeats. “I mean. John used to be a  _ fixer _ . Mobster. Mafioso. Whatever the hell they’re calling it these days.”

“I too would be shocked to find out my uncle murders people,” Derek sighs, dead-pan.

“Ha, ha,  _ now _ you find your humor,  _ bastard, _ ” Stiles retorts, trying to find the mini-bar. Granted, a posh place like the Continental might not have it, but Stiles is still holding out hope. He wants chocolate. 

Derek’s soft laugh is audible over the phone. Warmth settles in Stiles’ chest. “How is our favorite murdering bastard anyways?”

“Actually, he’s being smug about something. Not sure what. But you know what he’s like when he sits in chairs and stares at you.”

“Oh god he’s right there isn’t he?” Stiles replies. “You’re talking shit about him right in front of him.”

“No, technically, you’re talking shit, and I’m agreeing,” Derek replies, but doesn’t deny. 

Stiles groans. “Remind him that he likes us.”

“Come on Stiles, what’s a little maiming between family?” Derek asks, sounding smug. 

“You’re so right,” Stiles replies sarcastically. “But you’ll be the one to tell my uncle about my unfortunate demise. Sorry Mr.Wick, my undead uncle just,” Stiles clicks his tongue, “couldn’t handle being shit talked by his alpha.”

“Again, I’m not the one--”

“You’re such an asshole,” Stiles laughs. “I can’t believe I told John you weren’t.”

Derek laughs. He laughs, and Stiles feels an answering smile on his own face. He misses Derek. It’s been a long day, and he wishes nothing more than to return to the pack house and spend the evening there, maybe stay over. They could watch TV, or a movie, or something.

He knows that some of the feeling is him being connected to Beacon Hills and to the pack as an emissary, being connected to Derek with magic twice over, but he’s been stupidly crushing on Derek since they’d almost-drowned in the school pool his first year of High School. Fucking canima. Fucking Jackson.

Not to mention that he can deal with the disaster of learning his mother hid such a big secret from him there, where it’s safe to fall apart.

Stiles traces his newly minted scar -- and that had been a fun conversation -- with his fingers when there’s a loud, clear, knock on the hotel doors.

“I’ll have to call you back he’s-- Peter is telling me something sorry I’ll--”

“Yeah, it’s all good, I need to go too,” Stiles replies. 

“Don’t wreck havoc on the poor man,” Derek says. “Stay safe.”

When the phone disconnects, Stiles leaps to his feet. John did say not to open to anyone, Stiles reminds himself just after he’s swung the doors open. But, thankfully, it’s not some super assassin with a gun to his head, or a witch with a grudge. It’s just the porter with his suit.

Stiles takes it from his hands, thanks the man and closes the doors. He’s just about to hang it up when his phone rings. It’s not Spice Girls, so it’s not Derek, and it’s definitely not I Shot the Sheriff, which his dad still doesn’t find funny, so when he picks up he’s expecting one of two things. 

“Mr. Stilinski,” comes from the other side, and his hopes that it’s John are dashed. 

“Miss Midday,” Stiles replies. “What can I do for you?”

“What an excellent question, Mr. Stilinski. The Coven has agreed to lift your chargers in exchange for...appropriate reparations.”

Stiles rolls his eyes. 

“Considering you have found your way into the Continental, I am now aware of another skillset you can utilize for the Coven. I have a job for you. Shouldn’t be difficult for you, considering the butchering you did in California.”

What he was doing was protecting his pack. “I’m not a contract fixer.”

Miss Midday sounds amused when she says, “Of course not, you’re something much worse. But be that as it may, you have killed creatures, and the Coven will not bend over backwards for you. Either you want clemency or you don’t.”

Stiles is far too smart to argue his way out of magic prison, or whatever the witches want to do with him. 

Miss Midday, a woman who definitely doesn’t deserve a pleasant-sounding name like that, continues, “A name and a place. I want them gone. Then we can talk about arrangements.”

“Alright,” Stiles replies. 

She sounds condescending when she replies, “Nice doing business with you, Mr. Stilinski.”

The line goes dead, and Stiles sighs. A moment later, he gets a name, a location, and a picture of the man he’s supposed to kill. There are no details if it’s a creature or not but he has to be considering the Coven has issue with him. That, or he’s in the same position as Stiles.

It doesn’t matter anyway. His knives are all coated with wolfsbane, if it turns out to be a creature. And if it’s something worse, he has his magic. However shitty it is.

Shit, Stiles thinks. “This is so, so, so fucked up.”

The room, of course, remains silent. Not like it would agree with him, even if it could talk. It’s not like the whole hotel isn’t a hive of contract killers. Fixers. Jesus H. Christ. 

He definitely didn’t foresee things spiraling out of control like this. But that’s what he gets for listening to fucking Deaton, the absolutely asshole. Leave it to druids to ruin everything. 

“ _ There are rules Stiles, _ ” he mocks, as he checks his wound in the mirror. Due to his distance from Derek, it had taken it far too long to heal. “ _ Guidelines to be followed _ .”

Those guidelines got him in this deep shit in the first place. How was he supposed to know that burning down a nemeton was a magical offence? He didn’t know there were laws in the first place. He just knew about the Coven, and  _ that _ was because Deaton had insisted he didn’t need them until the whole nemeton shit started.  _ Then _ , he changed his tune. 

Stiles puts on his new suit. If nothing else, Lydia instilled a fear in him about wearing suits improperly so he takes care not to crease it and winds a windsor around his neck. It’s heavier than he expected. Not impractical, definitely not that, but he feels it settling over him, like a nice bullet-proof hug. He’s quick to slip into his new dress-shoes. 

For a lingering moment, Stiles looks at himself in the mirror, and imagines he’s just getting dressed for prom. Then he checks his knives and decides, if John is willing to leave guns around the room, he’s completely in his rights to take one. He doesn’t know what it will take to finish his  _ job _ but he would rather do it with something impersonal, like a gun.

Unlike himself, his magic is rearing and willing to go. In fact it’s burning up under his skin, volatile, strong. It shouldn’t be anywhere near this strong. In fact, Stiles should be exhausted. 

A few years back, in Gerard Argent’s basement, Stiles managed to free Erika and Boyd despite their shackles connected to electricity. However, he realized he had more abilities than manipulating mountain ash only when he’d been rear-ended by hunters, crashed into a telephone poll, accidentally dislodged an electric cable which fell on top of his car, and survived. 

He’s conductive or tolerant to electricity. If he pushes his magic, he can generate it and force it out of his body, just like he did to bring down the men in John’s kitchen. But such an endeavour saps him of strength, which is how Stiles had ended up with his wound. 

Stiles shouldn’t be refreshed and aware. Shouldn’t feel sparks dancing just under his skin, and he definitely shouldn’t feel as if he can do anything, which is the most dangerous thing of it all. 

Yet, Stiles cannot inspect where this new energy comes from and linger when he has a job to do.

He exits the hotel room in a quick step and almost bumps into a man as he takes the corner. 

“Sorry,” he says immediately.

The man laughs, waving him off. Then he says, “Oh you’re Jonathan's protege I take it. Very nice to meet you. Jonathan’s been guarding you jealously.”

He takes Stiles hand into a handshake. 

“Oh no, I’m not--”

The man cuts in. “So sorry about your loss, I couldn’t believe it when I read it in the news.”

“Thank you. Aunt Helen was really great,” Stiles says. 

“Yes, fine woman. Well, I’ll let you be,” the man says, and leaves in a hurried, strutting, step.

Stiles only then considers that John might in fact be infamous, and all the implications of being known in a world that deals in blood as its currency.

####  -

He’s in a taxi when Derek calls him again. 

“We have movement on the Coven front,” Stiles answers dutifully, looking out of the window. 

“I had to tell Peter about the situation,” Derek reports. 

Stiles does not yelp. He doesn’t. He shouts. So much so he can actually hear Derek’s grunt of pain as he, probably, stretches his hand out to get the phone away from his ear. 

  
“Derek! We agreed! No pertinent information is given to a lunatic psychopaths while things are still on-going. You  _ know _ how he gets twitchy about witches. Why the hell would you do that?”

“Because,” Derek replies gruffly, “he got all... _ weird and twitchy  _ after he heard your uncle’s name.” 

Stiles’ gapes, unable to come up with words, before he shuts his mouth with a click. He looks up at the taxi driver who is pointedly ignoring him. Thank god for New York, Stiles thinks. You can say the wildest shit out in the public and nobody bats an eye. Maybe it won’t be so bad moving here for college.

“Turns out your uncle is...known. Or rather, the Continental is. Some history with the Community, apparently the whole thing started up when creatures wanted to... deal with hunters and couldn’t.”

Stiles leans back into the seat. His voice is flat when he says, “That is objectively terrifying. Don’t know if it’s worse than Peter knowing about John though.”

“I always thought the stories about it were just that. If you ever need help, there is a way. But I was too young when the...” he takes a breath, “..the fire happened and Laura would have been too smart to look for the Continental when we got to NY.”

“So, what, you’re saying that little kiddie werewolves are taught there is a world of hitmen which will take care of their hunter problem for them if they ask nicely?” Stiles, even to his own ears, sounds hysterical. 

“Peter says it’s to not trod on each other’s toes. To be aware, but not to engage. Kind of like a warning sign that says ‘danger, stay away’.” 

Stiles nods, then realizes Derek can’t see him. He takes a deep breath. Sighs. He does it again. 

“Peter might have also found a way for you to deal with the witches,” Derek says. “He’s going through the old library right now. Something about packs, I have no idea.”

Stiles knows how difficult it’s for Derek to admit that, and he wants to encourage him, say good job, but he’s thinking about Peter going through the old library which has positively deadly books. As in, they’re literally deadly. Some are poisoned, some are cursed, and some are both, or they can do both, and he feels a shiver passes down his spine when he imagines what Peter could do with that. 

“Keep an eye on him,” Stiles says. Then, he repeats, “Derek? I’m serious. There’s some serious shit in those books. You and I don’t keep them under lock and key for nothing.”

“I know, Stiles,” Derek says. He sounds serious. “But he’s mostly going through the remnants of mom’s books and journals. He  _ has _ been changing, you know.”

Stiles exhales. “Better safe than sorry. I know he’s pack -- I know he’s pack. But.”

He doesn’t need to finish the sentence to know that Derek understands. 

There’s a moment of silence within which Stiles listens to his own quickened heartbeat in his ears, and the soft breathing over the phone. It shouldn’t be as comforting at it is. 

“You’re going to be alright,” Derek says quietly. Stiles isn’t sure if he’s saying that for Stiles or for himself. With their track record, Stiles isn’t so optimistic. 

“Stiles?” Derek says, and Stiles hates how much he likes the way he says it. “You’re going to be alright.”

It’s fucked up how Stiles associates those words with forehead touches, hands on his jaw, blood, always so much blood, accompanied by the roar of something in the distance and the feeling that maybe this time fate will finally catch up with them. They’re all alive until they aren’t. Death is the final destination, but ticket prices have always been cheap: a claw to the throat, a well positioned knife, a bullet. 

“You were saying something about the witches?” Derek asks. 

“Oh, right,” Stiles mumbles. “They gave me a job. I do it, I get a pardon, can come back home.”

“Sounds neat,” Derek says with a decent dose of wariness. He’s skeptical. Nothing’s ever easy for the two of them.

Stiles barks out a quick laugh that falls flat between them. He’s nearing his destination too. He needs to end this before he starts second guessing himself. All he has left is belief that, for once, thing just might go his way. The nemeton isn’t there to fuck with him anymore. For the first time, his life, fate and magic lay firmly in his two hands.

####  \- 

The club is obnoxiously loud even just standing in front of it. He wonders how much the owners pay the noise-pollution fines, then summons a spell that tastes like mercury on his tongue. He has no time to waste waiting in the queue on the off-chance he might get inside. 

Invisibility spells always take the most from him, mainly because he is not a subtle person. Deceiving one sense, like scent, is challenging. Deceiving all five is an exercise in perseverance and an attempt at self-maining. Thankfully, cutting corners is the one thing Deaton has taught him and Peter, in one of his more lucid moments, had told him one thing:  _ Information is key _ . After the third time vampires breached the town limits and turned into crazed, blood-driven zombies, Stiles had gone to Deaton to get a permanent spell tattooed onto his back. Sight. As a pack emissary, he’d hoped the spell would take. It did. 

Now, the spell doesn’t blur his vision which means that none of the guards are creatures. There is no use to mask his scent or his sound. If he runs into someone, they will still feel him colliding with them. But he only needs it to last a few seconds as he passes through the doors. 

He waits for an opening then slips inside the club with a retinue of girls. He takes a hard left almost immediately, following the wall until he falls into the shadows. The music is terribly loud, so much so, Stiles can barely hear his thoughts. The club is not yet brimming, but it’s a near thing. The air is stuffy, too warm, smelling of cigarette smoke and burning.

Stiles is about to let the spell drop when he hears gunshots. At first he thinks they’re the music then he sees a man with nothing but a towel pushing through the crowd with a gun in his hand and a bat -- Stiles’ bat -- clenched under his hand. Iosef Tarasov. His target. 

Stiles sees Jon, standing in front of the DJ, looking like the same cold fury Stiles had only glanced at before. Objectively, he looks terrifying. Subjectively, Stiles can see how close the wolf is riding to his skin. He’s a hunter now. A different person than the one Stiles knows.

Unpeeling his legs from their place, Stiles takes off after the naked man. If he’s Jon’s target as well, with Stiles’ bat under his hand, then he’s also one of the fuckers that killed Daisy. 

Stiles chases him through the guards to the balcony overlooking the dance floor. He doesn’t see one of the guards is a werewolf until it’s too late, and the man is reflexively throwing out his hand to try and catch him. 

Stiles duck and, thinking quick, completely conceals himself. The spell holds, even when he pushes himself through the man, incorporeal for an unimaginable moment, before he materializes on the other end. However, the man is far too occupied with shooting at John to question it any further. 

All Stiles can do for Jon is throw an impermanent shielding spell over him before he has to turn around and go after his target.

He ends up back on the street, watching Iosef cram himself into a car. With a last ditch effort, he takes the cursed hair the doctor had given him in the Continental and throws it so it sticks to the car. 

Curses, Stiles knows well, are very difficult to remove, especially when Stiles reinforces it with his own magic. 

With no time left to think, as the car speeds away, he searches the parking lot until he spots the Chevelle Jon came to the club in, and runs to it. Only then he lets the spell drop. 

Breaking into and hotwiring a car are skills that require no magic, only steady hands and nonchalance. Chris Argent taught him how to do it efficiently. He slips into the Chevelle and breathes as he types out the license plate numbers while they’re fresh on his mind and sends them to Danny. 

For a moment, Stiles remembers that he should not have been able to use so much magic, that he should be lying in a ditch somewhere with a splitting headache and bleeding out of every orifice. He should be completely fried. But all he’s feeling is energized beyond belief. The well he’d been draining his magic out of has hit an underground flow than threatens to flood it. 

Before Stiles can question himself further, he sees John limping out of the club.


	5. Chapter Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it would have been really long-winded to explain all the creatures so I will put this in notes. Almost all creatures (except the jorogumo) are from Salvic Mythology. I thought it apt considering Stiles is half-polish, and John is called the Baba Yaga. Almost all "evil" creatures are connected to stealing children, and considering Stiles is still a "teenager" I wanted to work the motif in. Miss Midday is a name of another creature as well, who appears in the noon and asks difficult questions. Things don't tend to end well for people who don't have the answers.
> 
> As always, thank you for the amazing feedback and I hope you enjoy this chapter! We're nearing the end.

Ten, eleven, twelve. Re-load, shoot, breathe. All the guards in red shirts are dead. In front of him the double doors are a good cover. He peaks through them, does a check of the terrace, before pushing through. His eyes immediately adjust to the darkness and strobing lights. His wolf is with him for the hunt.

John sees a civilian and nudges him away, knowing it’s likely a ricochet might catch him, and he knows the man sees the gun because he smells afraid. He steps away, just in time too, when the first guards on the balcony attack.

John counts: bullets, breaths, people. He may have retired, but even after five years, his body still remembers the steps. He hears the guns going off first. He turns too late to dodge, and sees the bullets which, rather than hit him square in the chest, glance off his shirt, as if it were metal, and embed into the beams.

John doesn’t have time to think on it. He acts. Iosef must have escaped by now, carrying that damn bat, but he has immediate hostiles to deal with first. He ends up in a fistfight, and realises his opponent is also a werewolf a minute too late, when claws find their way into his hand, shredding the skin and muscle, pulverizing the bone underneath. Jaws full of teeth snap at his neck, and when John tries to push the werewolf away, he sees his eyes are red. He needs a gun, a knife, anything to fight off the alpha, but all too soon John’s landing on his pistol, on his back, hitting the floor _hard_.

The crack of his spine is loud to his ears, louder even than the music. Yet, his healing factor kicks into gear immediately. Whatever’s broken holds together long enough for him to shoot at the other werewolf and to hobble to the exit.

He hears the screeching of tires, sees the Chevelle stopping in front of him in a non-too awkward drift, the passenger side doors opening.

Stiles’ face peeks out as he shouts, “Get in!”

John gets the feeling Stiles has done this many times. The moment he’s in the seat, closing the doors, Stiles speeds away.

The mobile phone he’d taken off Victor rings in his breast pocket.

“Victor,” he hears Iosef’s voice. “Where the fuck are you?”

“Victor’s dead,” John growls out in Russian. Usually, he can control his shift, but the wolf is pushing through now, agitated from pain and injury caused by an Alpha. Though he wants to heal, the flesh simply refuses to knit together. “Everything’s got a price.”

He crushes the phone in his hand and throws it out of the window. With pained breath, he leans back into the seat. “I thought I told you to stay in the hotel.”

“The Coven called,” Stiles says, voice, body, expression, his damn heartbeat, all calm. “Asked me to take care of a little problem for them.”

Stiles slows down the speed, and blends in with the rest of the traffic. “Then I see my target holding _my_ bat, in a towel, shouting about something.”

John hisses as he’s jostled. “Iosef Tarasov. What do they want with him? He’s not in the know.”

He notes that the Chavelle’s keys are still in his pocket, and decidedly not in the ignition. Aurelio is not going to be happy Stiles hotwired his car.

“Dead, as far as I know,” Stiles says. The scent on him is gunpowder, burnt hair, and the crisp crackling electricity of magic.

“Thought the witches could take care of themselves.”

“This _is_ them taking care of themselves. Who better to ask than a guy out of state, who’s in their debt, and who’s going to the other end of the country by the end of the week?”

John agrees, it’s very convenient. It’s just that something doesn’t feel quite right about it.

“You should have left, tailed Iosef.”

Stiles doesn’t reply because his phone rings and the expression and his face twists. “Miss Midday,” he answers, “did anyone ever tell you that micromanagement is bad for trust-building exercises?”

John concentrates, and his hearing sharpens to a fine point, where he can hear the reply from the other end. “--coy Mr. Stilinski. Being involved with the Continental is one thing, but being involved with Mr. Wick is another.”

Something passes over Stiles’ face but he checks it in favor of rolling his eyes, and glancing at John with a hand to the phone as if trying to say, _See what I’m dealing with?_

John is more concerned with Stiles keeping his eyes to the road and hands on the wheel.

“I assume there’s a point to this call? I would hate to be pulled over. New York has strict fines and all.”

“You kicked the snake’s nest, but you didn’t cut it’s head. I need that man gone, Mr. Stilinski. Quickly. Or should I remind you that the Coven’s gracious privileges can be revoked at any moment? To you _and_ Mr. Wick.”

“Of course not. I am well aware of the courtesy the Coven has extended towards me,” Stiles replies cloyingly sweetly, so much so, even John makes a face.

However, Miss Midday, simply replies, “Soon, Mr. Stilinski. Since _Baba Yaga_ is with you now, I want results.” Then she hangs up.

Stiles takes a breath and lifts an eyebrow. “Baba Yaga?”

The Director had wanted to teach him a lesson; nobody usually left Ruska Roma but John had still found his way into the Marine Corps. There, he’d found more of the same. Suffering. Killing. People like him, diagnosed as deficient in empathy, doing what they were taught to do best.

After signing up with the Continental under Marcus’ watchful gaze, John had been a gun for hire. It was a long time before Tarasovs. The first time he killed hunters was because a scorned mother, rendered omega, had lost her children to them.

Afterwards word got around. Other creatures, people who would have never even glanced under the table, had come to him to solve their problems. Usually it was hunters but sometimes it was pack wars, vampires moving into nests, covens trying to sabotage rituals. John had never discriminated.

Neither had Baba Yaga. Help one, destroy another. The Community remembered. When he’d met Addy, she’d already known who he was. Tarasovs had learnt of it soon after, but they’d never found out where the nickname began.

Better that way, Jon has always thought.

“I killed a right man at the right time,” John replies, still grunting in pain. It’s not something he wishes to talk about. Dealing with witches has always been messy, especially when they get territorial. They’d not liked that he’d garnered the title of Baba Yaga -- being both a man and a werewolf. “Werewolves aren’t under their jurisdiction though. It’s the Assembly I would be more worried about.”

Stiles blinks, then looks at him, and blinks again. The question is clear in his face.

John realizes, with a terrible dawning feeling, that Stiles has no idea what he’s talking about.

“Tell me you know what the Assembly is,” John says. It’s the closest since he’s come to begging in years. But Stiles’ expression remains confused. “Did your alpha tell you _nothing_?”

“In his defence,” Stiles starts, much too even-hearted for his liking, “he doesn’t know shit.”

That, if nothing else, doesn’t strike John silent as much as it inspires words in him. “That isn’t exactly _acceptable_ behaviour, Stiles.”

“Look, I’ll be the first to tell you that Derek fucks up okay? I call him out on it _constantly_. But he learns, does better. And anyways, I’m like, 99% sure your kinda rules really don’t apply to Beacon Hills.”

He looks at John for a reaction, then he motions with his hand, “So, what is this Assembly?”

John doesn’t know where to begin. He was never great at explanations, and now, that his outrage has calmed, and his wounds are reminding him they’re there, John is more agitated than anything else.

“It’s like a congress. Every prominent family has a representative, and they deal with transgressors. New York has a very big and very old Community, which tends to take care of itself. If two vampire clans decide to merge, or decide on confrontation, they’re there to write down the results, deal with the injured, keep the status quo.”

“So they’re like EU,” Stiles offers.

“More like a secret police and armed militia wrapped up in some very nice clothes,” John replies. “But they like to keep the peace.”

In reality, the Assembly reminds him too much of the Camorra, but he isn’t the one to tell Stiles about that. Though he’s peaked under the table, Stiles is, and should always stay, far above it.

“Why aren’t you healing?” Stiles asks as he pulls up in front of the Continental. He looks critically over John as if he can somehow gage the damage levels with his eyes alone.

“Alpha claws,” John explains.

Stiles pulls a sympathetic face, wincing. He _would_ be familiar how nightmarishly long it takes wounds from alphas to heal. Usually, John would have steered clear of claws. His preferred method is always impersonal and distant, a bullet laced with wolfsbane placed in the frontal lobe. Nobody is immune to that.

It will take John twice the time to heal himself than usual, considering he’s a lone wolf, an omega, now that Helen is gone.

“Want to hobble up the lobby, or do you want me to heal you now?”

John snarls. He hates magic. But Stiles is calm.

“Just give me your hand. It’s as simple as that.”

Begrudgingly, John takes his hand in a sturdy handshake. Nothing happens. Or rather, nothing happens outwards. However, John sees something spark, flash, and bangs behind Stiles’ glowing golden eyes. It travels from Stiles’ hand into John’s, and a moment later John feels his bones mending together. Stiles, himself, is not healing him. Rather, it’s like his magic is promoting his own healing, stimulating and feeding it.

John walks into the lobby perfectly fine. They ride up to the room without being stopped. Only once they’re in relative safety of the Continental does John note that Stiles is wearing his new suit, that he’s slicked his hair back, and that he’s looking older than ever. He looks professional.

He flips open his phone and dials. “Hey Danny,” he says, “anything on those plate numbers? Great, thank you.” From his backpack, he picks out a laptop and sets it on the table.

For a while, as he gets cleaned up in the bathroom, John can’t hear anything but the clacking of Stiles’ fingers over the keyboard and a faint voice from the other end of the line.

Once he walks out, scrubbed clean and in sleepwear, Stiles beckons him over. John takes a seat next to Stiles.

“From Iosef’s car, as you might have inferred. Danny tracked the plate number to one part of NY where it disappears. And I managed to plant that cursed hair on the car before it sped away. Now I just need to sense it out.”

“That’s...ingenious,” John says.

Stiles smiles. “Thanks. Anyways, fair warning, this may be really draining because I just gave you a boost so...fair warning. If I faint, don’t panic.”

John gives him a look and Stiles grows red. He turns to the map on the screen he’d pulled up and closes his eyes. Then he opens them and types something. He does that a couple of times until he finally decides on one location.

Showers in the Continental are great. They’ve loosen up the tense muscles in John’s shoulders thought now John feels equal parts tired and ravenous.

“I have it,” Stiles announces. It looks like a row of empty hangers.

“That’s a safehouse,” John says. “I’m familiar with it. Good job.”

Stiles smiles at him, and Jon orders room service which comes while Stiles is cleaning himself up in the shower. They eat in relative silence.

Partially through the meal, a thought occurs to him. Something which had bothered him that evening. He turns to Stiles, who has changed into a large shirt smelling of wolf, and pajama bottoms, sitting opposite him at the table.

“What’s with that bat?”

“Hmm?” Stiles asks, still focused on the food.

“Iosef carried it to the club with him. It’s not a rational choice.”

“People are random. Maybe he just liked it.”

John doubts it. When he’d seen Iosef and noted the bat, there was nothing attractive about it. In fact, John felt a wave of repulsion wash over him and it wasn’t because of the mountain ash.

“Stiles,” John says.

Stiles sighs and rolls back his shoulders.

“Who do you think gets cursed more easily, a random human or a creature?” Stiles shrugs. “I told you I thought the bat was cursed. The nemeton was causing us problems because it was cut and then a demon was trapped in its roots.”

John feels a shiver go down his spine. He knew it was never good getting attached to weapons. When in hands of creatures like them, they always catch magic.

“It’s great for fighting. But it’s still a bomb in hands of someone who has no idea how to use it.”

“I can’t touch it,” John says.

Stiles stands, cracks his spine, and says, “I know. Tomorrow, I’m coming with you.”

John nods. “We should sleep.”

Stiles must have expected resistance because he looks at John for a moment, before he turns around to take his laptop then folds himself on his bed.

“I’m... not tired.”

John sighs and finishes his meal before calling housekeeping to take the plates away.

He hears shuffling of clothes. Stiles rubs his hands together though John wonders if it’s from nervousness or self-comfort.

Stiles is no witch. And yet. He wonders where such energy is coming from. Right about now he should be out cold, especially so far from his Alpha.

“John,” Stiles says, voice low and conspiratorial. “I don’t think the Coven wants me to just kill Iosef. There’s something strange about all of this. They _knew_ about you. They had eyes on us.”

Something about that rings familiar to John. He doesn’t believe in hunches to carry him through, but he believes in them enough to start him off onto a good course. It has always been like this. There’s magic in little things. There has always been for those like him and Stiles.

“The Coven is not telling you everything. As per usual. I’ll try and find some information.” He looks at his wrist watch. It’s not too late. Addy might be working. Even though John desperately needs to sleep off today, he resigns himself to going to the bar again.

He hears Stiles snicker. “Werewolves,” he says. It’s a nice sound. He’s smiling.

“Anything your magic can do about my clothes?” John asks. Charon won’t be of any help; too much blood on too much white.

Stiles gives the pile folded on one of the chairs a critical once-over. “I can lend you a black sweater but I don’t know how comfortable you are wearing a scent of another werewolf.”

John makes a face. “I’ll pass.” He grabs one of his turtle necks and his pants. On his way there he says, “I thought magic was supposed to be convenient.”

“For witches, sure,” Stiles shouts from the other room.

John grunts, and tries to convince himself that it isn’t so bad talking with Addy two nights in a row and that, really, he doesn’t look like death took him for a spin.

#### -

“John!” Addy says, sounding genuinely pleased. Then she says, “You look like death took you for a spin.”

 _No_ , he wants to say, _just Stiles_ , but the joke would be lost. Furthermore he’s supposed to be keeping Stiles on the down low. John doesn’t like that the witches know about his involvement, but since they do, now it isn’t too far fetched to consider that Tarasovs know about Stiles. If Iosef has even a semblance of self-preservation, which he does if the night proves anything, then John needs to deal with the fact that they might be gunning for Stiles as well.

“I feel like it,” he replies instead, and sits down at one of the bar chairs. He orders his usual, bourbon, and wonders what the hell he’s doing. This could have been so much easier without Stiles and his complications. John should keep his eye on the ball, on the whole reason he’s here, in the Continental, in the first place. Iosef fucking Tarasov. But instead, John is having a drink in the last place he wants to be, trying to keep the last real family Helen had alive.

“So, I’ve heard an interesting rumor,” Addy starts once she’s free. John has always repelled people, and those who’ve been sitting at the bar move over to the tables. “About a certain young man, in a certain suit.”

“Oh?” John asks, lifting an eyebrow. He and Addy always played games. Not that John is in the mood, but it’s Addy.

She leans over and whispers, “Some are talking about the P word.” John quirks an eyebrow. He’s definitely never through about having a protege, and Stiles is definitely not it.

“See,” she says,”that’s what I thought. But other options aren’t that juicy.”

“I know how the Continental rumor mill spins,” John replies. “What I’m more interested in is what’s been happening on the streets.”

Addy lifts an eyebrow in question.

“The Coven’s interrupted me on the job. Not classic behaviour when it comes to them,” John says.

Addy considers. “It could be with the boy. So far as I’ve heard they’re still after him.”

No, John thinks. There has to be a reason why the Coven wants Iosef Tarasov dead. He looks at his bourbon, but alcohol has never had any answers for him. “You said, before, that someone’s been pushing into our turf.”  


“Oh sure, but that’s werewolf turf mostly, down near Brooklyn. It’s old land, lots of families there, bordering with the Bowery. That’s why it’s an issue. But nothing to do with witches,” Addy says. Her words are familiar, and after a moment, John remembers Aurelio saying something similar. About Iosef itching for a fight, about expanding.

“You’re really concerned about this,” Addy says, sounding particularly surprised.

“I’m on a hunt,” he says in lieu of explanation. What can he say? _Despite trying not to, I’m worried about my nephew_? It sounds banal. Especially, in their world.

“I would suggest you take it up with the Coven but,” they both know that won’t happen. “The Coven will be distracted in a few days anyways. The Embassy is supposed to finally do something about that region, which means all three heads are supposed to be present. So you’ll have time then.”

“When you say do something, do you mean peace talks or war?” John asks. The Embassy tends to swing the way of least resistance, which means that John has been present both for handshakes and slaughter.

Addy looks thoughtful for a moment. Then she says, “Everybody wants to come out for the best in the end. I doubt that the commons pushing in really want to die. But if they do something stupid, you know the Coven keeps up the wards. It will be fine for us, either way.”

John sincerely doubts that, but he doesn’t argue. He gets another drink, then returns to his room.

#### -

Stiles isn’t soothed by the information John gives him but he thanks him all the same. He looks like he’s been on the phone for a while too, and he doesn’t look particularly happy.

John can’t ask. Despite everything, they’re just not that close.

#### -

John startles awake with the sound of something hitting the floor. For a moment, he can’t see anything but the shining coming from, when he looks better, Stiles’ tattoos. They pulse with greenish light, like kids’ toys that glow in the dark.

Instinct guides him to his feet, when he sees a familiar clump of black hair partially hiding a familiar snarling face. Only, however vicious Perkins always was, she’s not moving from where she’s sprawled onto the floor. Not in any meaningful way at last. She’s shouting, and gritting her teeth, and looking up at Stiles, hands fisted together. It appears as if she’s being tazed.

“John,” Stiles says, with a voice low and serious. “Could you get the lights?”

John turns on the lights. “Perkins,” he says. Stiles blinks at her, then frowns. “Who’re you?”

He steps away from her, he’d been standing on her, and the moment he does whatever spell had been holding Perkins down releases her. She stills, then she leaps to her feet, but John is there, quick to intercept her and knock her down onto the floor.

“John, careful, she’s a...harpy?”

“Nocnitsa, actually,” John corrects. He steps closer, catching her gaze. “I didn’t think little Miss Perkins gets out of the bed for less than three.”

John secures her hands with cuffs Stiles hands to him, then hauls her up into a chair.

“Tararov’s giving me four for breaking the hotel rules,” she replies. “He didn’t tell me about...whatever the fuck the boy is.”

“I ask myself that _all_ the time,” Stiles retorts dryly.

The hotel telephone starts ringing and Stiles, closest to it, picks up. John can hear Charon’s smoot voice informing Stiles about a noise complaint.

“We apologise. We’ve been dealing with an unwanted guest,” Stiles tells the man.

Both John’s and Perkins’ ears are sharp enough to hear Charon saying, “I see. Will you be needing a dinner reservation?”

Stiles looks at John, frowning. Before John can tell him what to say, he replies, “We’ll be sure to inform you when we decide.”

By the time the conversation is over, Perkins’ anger has cooled.

“On one hand, cool. I always _wanted_ to meet a succubus. On the other hand, kinda disappointed,” Stiles tells John.

John wouldn’t really put Perkins in the territory of succubus but he guesses Stiles already knows nocnitsa were always in the children-stealing business.

Stiles plucks at his shredded shirt and frowns. It looks comical hanging off of him. “Also like, this was my favorite? Rude.”

He takes it off, revealing his mauled and tattooed chest, before stalking away towards, John notes, his backpack which had been thrown across the room. John’s eyes return to Perkins.

“What the fuck is this John? You finally found an heir? You training him?” Perkins taunts, glaring at him and hissing all the while.

She’s scared. He can smell it. Whatever Stiles did to her, she’s afraid and Perkins is not a person who’s ever afraid. She’s a psychopath. Psychopaths are only afraid of pain and death.

“Awful young don’t you think?” she asks.

“We all started young,” John reminds her.

She blanches. John hadn’t intended to but he’d confirmed her wild suspicions. It’s not courteous to lie to his coworkers but it won’t matter soon enough. He knows what the Continental does to the people who break the rules.

“What the fuck did you do to him? He’s worse than you.”

Stiles returns in the black jumper. It still smells strongly of alpha hormones. He says to John, “You want that dinner reservation or not? This is getting boring.”

He doesn’t even know what he’s asking, John thinks amused despite himself, but Perkins snarls.

“Give me something Perkins,” John says. “I can’t break the rules, but he’s not in the books yet.”

Perkins snarls then huffs. “Little Russia. There’s a church near Cannon Court. It’s a front. Tarasov keeps his stash there.”

John nods. Not particularly pertinent information, but still useful to know. He could knock her out. He looks at Stiles. “Call Charon. Tell him we don’t need a dinner reservation but housekeeping.”

Stiles does as told. Once he hangs up he says, “They’ll-- oh yeah you keep listening in on conversations. Whatever.” Stiles goes to his laptop. He doesn’t look like he’s slept at all.

John doesn’t make the mistake of looking away from Perkins. She bites her tongue until John hears the lift doors opening on their floor. “What the fuck is he John?”

John doesn’t reply. He isn’t sure anymore either. He’s met pack emissaries before. Even killed a few. But Stiles’ magic goes beyond that which he recognized.

Stiles opens the doors and the housekeeping takes Perkins off their hands. Once alone, Stiles start speaking.

“By the way, do you have a friend who’s a really intent voyeur? Like really into it?”

“What?”

“Someone’s been watching us from the top of the next building. They’re gone now though.”

“Marcus,” John says. He turns his eyes towards Stiles. “How do you know?”

Stiles immediately connects two and two. “I’ve met him. During the funeral. Didn’t go back to the house.” His eyes appear to glow yellow for a moment, face awash with the blue computer light. “He put a bullet through my pillow.”

He shows John the offending pillow with a charred hole in it. John had slept through that. It alarms him more than the fact Marcus needed to intervene.

“He’s an old friend,” John says.

“How did he know where to find you?”

“The contract Perkins mentioned must be wide. He knows others will come after me. He’ll watching my back.”

Stiles looks up from his laptop. “That sounds crazy you know.”

“We need to sleep, and deal with Iosef. Everything else comes after.”

For once, John actually sees Stiles lying down and closing his eyes.

#### -

It’s early morning when they wake up, have breakfast, and dress. John gives Stiles a gun, on his word that he knows how to use it, only to see Stiles already has one. In fact, it’s one of the guns John had tucked away under the bed in case people like Perkins were to get ideas. Or, more realistically, Winston decided he wanted to clean up the mess. John may not be excommunicado but he _is_ retired.

Stiles gives him an unapologetic smile. John remembers he’s been hired by the witches to do the same job as John. He wishes now that he knew what his abilities were. He’d not seen him taking on the five men when they’d invaded John’s home, he only saw the bloody consequences. He never saw Stiles in the club, and he didn’t see him wielding his bat with which he’d, supposedly, taken care of the creatures sent after him.

The only reason John is not taping him to the chair is the fact that he has magic which is strong enough to incapacitate even someone as strong as Perkins. Old creatures like Perkins, as a rule, were born with magic of their own and with set rules about which magic can affect them. Most think it superstition to bind a child’s arm with red string, to put scissors under the crib or a pillow, to rub a child who’s been ill for days with an egg, but those are rituals which allow one to survive creature magics and curses.

Most have been lost to time and insignificance. The traditions remain only in the countries where they’ve originated. John is fortunate only in one regard: he has practical knowledge borne from living a handful of hellish years in the Old Country.

They leave in a car Charon prepared for them as a gift of apology for last night’s inconvenience.

John had worked for Tarasovs long enough to know to navigate their warehouses. In truth, he doesn’t need Stiles here for this part. For the killing. But Stiles needs to be there for himself.

As with most things, prep consumes most of his time: scoping the safehouse, planting explosives, and finding a weak link in their security.

“I can try to sneak in,” Stiles says not for the first time.

“It won’t matter in the end,” John tells him. It doesn’t.

John proceeds as he’s planned had Stiles been there or not. The security on the ground level is first to go, so nobody can prematurely sound an alarm. He takes up one of the vantage points from where he can see the snipers, and removes them from play. Now sightless and clawless, all he needs to do is head for the parking lot of the warehouses.

The smell in the air, as he fires from one of the guard’s sniper rifles, is familiar and burns his lungs. Wolfsbane.

The moment the shooting starts, all of his focus comes down to fighting his way into the warehouse. Stiles has his back, whatever that means. He keeps quiet, to himself, and John knows he’s there only through his heartbeat. Nobody new to the world under the table can get comfortable so quickly.

There’s only two guards to dispatch before he detonates the explosive under the escape cars. It’s easy. Too easy. Viggo had given up his son, left him a sitting duck. For him. For his revenge.

He sees the panic, smells the fear rolling off Iosef who still, stubbornly, clings to Stiles’ bat. The two shots John fires are directed at mass center. His grouping has always been good. John doesn’t miss. And yet, just like bullets had glanced off of him in the Red Circle, now they glance off of Iosef’s shirt.

Iosef looks down at his chest, then sprints, disappearing between the crates.

“It’s my magic,” Stiles says quietly. “The bat’s warding him, just like I warded you in the club.”

Stiles goes one way while John rounds around. They pin Iosef who couldn’t have escaped again in any case with no car out in the middle of nowhere.

“Stay back!” Iosef screams, pointing the bat at John then at Stiles. Fear. Fear. Fear. So much of it. John’s lungs are filled with it.

John doesn’t want to come anywhere close to the bat, but there are ways of killing other than with a gun. A magical problem can be resolved with a magical solution. John hasn't used his claws in a long time, but he will. For this. For peace of mind. For a clean slate.

Stiles doesn’t seem in the mood to talk. He runs towards Iosef even though the man takes a swing, ready to break something precious. Stiles stops the bat, wraps his hand around it, and places the other on Iosef’s chest. Sparks travels through it, shocking Iosef enough to yelp and jump back right into John’s awaiting claws. With his other hand, John pulls the trigger twice and this time the bullets stick.

“It was just a fuckin do--”

One to the head. John has always liked making sure his kills are clean. He breathes a sigh of relief and a sigh of vengeance fulfilled. It’s finally over.

Mute, they make their exit from the warehouse, get into the Dodge Charger and drive away. Viggo will get the news soon enough. John wonders if he’ll allow things to settle, or want to take revenge. John will behave depending on the fact if his contract gets taken back or the two million get doubled.

As he drives, John notes how Stiles inspects his weapon: the bat that had made him stay in this blood-touched world. It looks like any old baseball bat from the corner stone near the stadium. The polish has even worn off. It’s the feeling of it, physically near him, and the fact that it smells like every single thing Stiles has killed, that has John feeling wary, uncomfortable.

“You know,” Stiles starts, frowning down at his weapon, “the bat wasn’t supposed to ward Iosef. It wasn’t supposed to ward _me_. It’s not that sort of weapon.”

He passes a hand over it and his face shifts making Stiles appear aged. He appears as comfortable with magic as he does with guns and blood.

“it’s as if the wood remembered my magic, or sucked some of it into itself and then thrown it back at me.” His hands tightens around the bat when he lifts his eyes to look at John. “I think that...the demon survived as well.”

For a single moment, John wants to roll down the window and throw the bat out of it. Unfortunately, as with most magical items, that would only bring more trouble. Stiles should have handed the bat over to the witches. It’s still the best option. They know how to deal with this.

Stiles lets the bat rest on his lap and takes out his phone. He types something quickly into it and after a moment it rings with a received message. Stiles reads him the address, and says, “It’s the Coven. Time to talk about that pardon.”

Dutifully, John shifts lanes.

That’s when Stiles’ legs starts jumping, his hands twisting together. “You know when you feel as if something’s not right but you don’t know what? And you kinda don’t want to believe that feeling because if you do then you have to deal with whatever’s coming at you and the consequences?”

“I always trust that feeling,” John says.

For a moment Stiles is silent. “The Coven is not telling me something. About this bat, the nemeton. Before, more than two spells a day would _exhaust_ me because I have constant wards in Beacon Hills. And now I’m not even tired. I’m not _sleeping_.”

“Tarasovs were encroaching on the Community’s territory. It could have been just Iosef. But Viggo isn’t the person to let him be unsupervised. The guys in the warehouse were using wolfsbane bullets. The head of his security is a werewolf.”

Stiles bites his lip, gnawing at it. “There is no reason to just kill Iosef. If they wanted to deal with the problem, they would have sent me after the head of the family.”

Stiles stews on this information until they’re near the location. John parks the car across the street. It’s one of the coven’s pubs. It usually opens later, but John can hear heartbeats inside.

“You can stay out here,” Stiles says.

John gives Stiles a long look. He should call Marcus, thank him for looking out for him, go back to the hotel until the contract’s pulled, then go home. His mission is over. He’s done.

“It’s a great place to get killed,” John tells Stiles.

Stiles looks at him then snorts. “No offence, John, but werewolves aren’t exactly magic-proof.”

John removes his seatbelt and Stiles takes it as the end of the argument. “If this happened a year or two years ago, I would have so bitched about it.”

“You’re not now?” John replies through a sigh.

Stiles does something with his hands and the bat disappears. John can smell it, but he can’t see it. Just like the coin.

They walk up to the bar doors and they open before Stiles can knock.

John sees a burly woman, tall with cropped hair. She’s dressed in black. Tactical boots. She seems to recognize Stiles by sight. Her dark eyes look at John and she freezes, stopping Stiles from entering the bar.

“Oh come on dude,” Stiles says, sounding so casual, it’s as if they’re not in danger at all. It’s forced, it has to be, but it doesn’t sound like it. “You know how we packs are, he’s family.”

After a lingering moment, the woman moves and they walk inside. Immediately, John notes the guards. One behind the bar, two at the doors, two at the other doors, one in a corner. They’re all creatures, all dressed just like the woman who’d greeted them at the doors. The only one who stands out is a woman sitting at the bar. Miss Midday. She’s in a suit, wearing so much gold it’d weight down her body should it be thrown in the ocean. Her hair is long and blond, but it looks as if it’s sun-bleached. Her skin is tanned and ruddy, as if she’s spent one too many days out in the sun.

John stands off to the side where he can keep an eye on everyone. His gun doesn’t have appropriate bullets, but that doesn’t mean it’s not useful. Nobody can heal from shattered kneecaps quickly.

“Mr. Stilinski,” she says in a condescending voice. “With, Mr. Wick, I see.” She doesn’t sound too pleased about that.

John watches as Stiles smiles and shrugs. He’s offered a seat but he refuses. Good. Smart. Both legs should always be on the ground for a quick exit.

“You don’t mind if we wait for confirmation do you?” the woman says.

“I was hoping to hop on the next plane to California,” Stiles replies.

The woman laughs then says, “You want a drink?”

She already has one in her hand.

“Sorry, I’m not legal yet,” Stiles sasses. “And I don’t want to judge your life choices, but it’s noon.”

“You’re a particular shade of annoying so I need all the pick-me-up I can have,” she replies.

Stiles is amused when he says, “I’ve been told.”

He leans one elbow onto the bar, turning his back to John. “You know, if someone told me four years ago that all this...shit existed I would have laughed. I mean, the Hales were there for a reason right? Who lets a nemeton go unprotected?” Stiles laughs. “Hunters man.”

“You seem to have made house with them over there. An Argent is part of your pack, correct?”

John tries not to react but even he, a werewolf, is aware of the prodigious hunter families. The Argents have a long, bloody history tarnished by their most recent pyromaniac relative. If John remembers correctly, the Argents should have been a part of the Assembly.

“It did take killing off the rest of the family,” Stiles says in appeasement.

That explains it, John thinks. Thought how the Assembly didn’t avenge Gerard is a question he will pose later. Perhaps there were consequences to his daughter’s behaviour after all.

“We know. We did a little digging, after you turned up here,” the woman says.

Stiles blinks. “You cyberstalked me you mean.”

The woman ignores him. “You can drop the act. You’ve known about the society for a very long time, haven’t you? Playing a fool won’t save you now.”

Her nail makes an irritating tapping sound on the wood. “The Steins are a powerful clan here. But I hear that you’re disowned from them.”

“I honestly have no idea what you’re talking about,” Stiles lies. However, his heart is steady. He’s made it steady. Jon realises Stiles could have lied to him about anything else, but _didn’t_.

“Claudia Stilinski, née Stein. Born to Gretta Stein, the alpha, and one of the heads of the Assembly. Human born true, but in the known. Rare that the werewolf gene skips two generations, but she did marry a common. And then she had the little magical you.”

Midday’s phone pings. She looks at it and smiles. “Iosef Tarasov dead, shot in the head. With the rest of the guards. Congratulations, you’ve officially started off the war with the mob.”

Stiles’ smile disappears. “Is that what this has been all about? War?”

“You’ll be court-marshalled. The power you stole from the nemeton by destroying it will be stripped from you and added to the Coven. As they always should have been. Cheers,” she says raising her glass.

John’s realization is only a moment slower than Stiles’. “Tarasov’s been muscling in on the territory hasn’t he? But that was long before I got here. You fucked up.”

“Believe it or not, two underworld societies can’t coexist without someone stepping on someone’s tail. Tarasov got powerful. So he found out.” Midday spins in her chair and stands. She would have been taller than Stiles even without the heels. “And now you’ve given him a reason to attack us first. And when he does, we can wipe him out.”

“The Embassy will have a war fallout to deal with, and won’t dig. You were warding the region right? But people still died. The wards weren’t working properly...on _purpose._ He has something on you.”

“Is that confession of previous knowledge of our customs?” Midday asks, unflappable.

Tarasov must have been blackmailing the witches over something, so as to let him muscle in on the territory. It means they’ve been corrupted. Neither the Assembly, and especially not the Embassy, who has always been keeping checks and balances, will stand for it. If they find out.

“Would you believe me if I told you that my mother never actually told me anything?” Stiles asks. Before Midday can answer he adds, “But it doesn’t matter does it?”

“No,” Midday admits. “You were done the moment we knew you had a nemeton’s power inside you and I can’t have the Assembly knowing about this hiccup. Now, will you go peacefully or do I need to use force?”

Stiles raises his hands up and gestures at John. “What will happen to him?”

“Mr. Wick is an outlier, and as such, may return to the Continental. He has always belonged more to _them_ than to _us_.”

In that moment Stiles’ phone goes off. Not the usual ringtone, but what John has learned is his Alpha’s ringtone. The Spice Girls. In the next moment John hears glass breaking, and he watches as Midday staggers and topples to the floor. Marcus.

The security leaps at them. John doesn’t give them the chance to get close. He blows out the kneecaps and shoots each in the head, before going for the guard in the corner, while Stiles bashes one in the head with his bat. The problem, John thinks, with werewolves and other creatures is that they just heal too damn fast.

“John, up,” Stiles shouts. John leaps onto the bar just in time to see Stiles touch the floor, and to watch electricity run from his palm through the floor. Where before it had simply incapacitated Perkins, now the guards fall unconscious. However, by the time it’s over, Stiles look about ready to empty his guts.

Despite looking ill, Stiles stands and fishes out Midday’s phone from her pockets.

“It’ll stop them from healing too fast,” Stiles informs John while he jumps down from the bar. “Also holy shit I so need to thank Marcus. Maybe a fruit basket?”

“We need to leave,” John says, wrenching the doors open.

Stiles agrees by running out first. They get into the car and speed away from the bar and get to the Continental just before John’s phone pings. “Four million,” the text reads. Viggo’s raised the bounty on him. It seems that John’s work is not yet done. He’ll need to remove Viggo from the picture both for his and for Stiles’ sake.

“Extended stay, sir?” Charon asks.

“Unfortunately, yes,” John replies.

Up in the room, Stiles says, “We need to deal with this quickly. When Midday comes back to, she’s going to put a magical APB on me and then it’s free-for-all Stiles buffet.”

John sighs. “We can go to Little Russia. See what’s in his stash.”

“That way we can draw him out. End this now before--”

Stiles’s phone starts ringing with the familiar ringtone.

John’s eyes narrow. “At this point, I know your alpha’s ringtone.”

“Yeah, Derek’s in town.” Stiles cringes. Hard. John would think Stiles would be happy to be so near him. Instead, he slumps on his bed while John picks out the weapons for the assault.

“We could use the firepower,” John tells him.

“No, no we definitely can’t,” Stiles says, swiping to end the call. “The witches are my problem.”

“Marcus has been useful. Someone unexpected will also be useful. Think about it,” John says. He doesn’t know if Stiles is over-protective or ashamed.

There’s a telling stillness in the conversation within which John counts to ten before he says, “You didn’t look surprised when Midday told you about Gretta being in the Assembly.”

“Turns out that Derek and his sister were under her care while in New York after...well there was a fire. The whole pack burned,” Stiles says making a face. “It’s difficult for Derek to remember the first few years after the fire, but his sister kept a consistent journal. His uncle found it. Anyway, he wouldn’t have talked with Gretta. At the time, his sister was the alpha.”

There’s more to the story but John will not push. “If you go the Assembly they might help you.”

“Too late now,” Stiles retorts. “I already made an agreement with the Coven. Though, they might not get the war they wanted. As far as Viggo knows, you killed his son.”

“He knows I’m a werewolf now. He will use it,” John reminds him.

Stiles whole demeanor changes. “Then he too had wanted an excuse to expand though I doubt he would have handed his son over.”

“No. It’s just consequences.” John remembers that there had always been an in-good-faith agreement between the community and the world under the table. Viggo is trying to wiggle out of that agreement. And John had opened the doors for him.

“You know,” Stiles says, “I probably would have never learned anything about this whole other world, the Community, as you called it if I stayed in Beacon Hills. But this is something we can talk about later. This is not the time, not the place.”

John considers Stiles. “You’re right. Talk with Derek. Then we can go to Little Russia.”

“I can talk on the ride there,” Stiles says standing. Though he’d looked infirm in the bar, now he looks rejuvenated again. His eyes are hard, determined.

John places a hand on his shoulder. Sparks run through his hand, though Stiles doesn’t even look aware he’s doing it. John bears through it and says, “Let’s finish this.”


	6. Chapter Six

Even though Stiles is the first one to make werewolf jokes, especially and particularly pointed at Derek’s general Derek-ness, he has to admit that he has a pretty limited samples size to draw on. Derek and Peter don’t make a good example for born werewolves. In fact, they are probably outliers that prove some kind of rule that has to do with being fucked by life.

The werewolves attacking them in Beacon Hills don’t count. Stiles generally doesn’t count anything that was under the influence of the nemeton. How, exactly, the pack stayed sane, or something in the realm of sane, definitely sane-adjacent at the very least, is the biggest miracle since that one time Stiles asked Derek out and he’d actually said yes.

Granted, by the time he got around to it, they were some 98% sure they were going to die, covered in bloodcap guts, and just this side of passing out. Nobody ever accused Stiles of having good timing.

The point, Stiles thinks as he watches John enter the church, shoot a _priest_ and get into the ‘stash’ in under five minutes, is that despite all his dog jokes he’d never really thought of werewolves beyond the realm of people. They _are_ people. They just have some extra bits attached and magic that turns them into good 70s special-effects puppets once a month.

That is to say, he knows that John is a person. However, it’s difficult to remember that when it comes to the hunt. John doesn’t hunt in the way Stiles is used to: guided by the ground, sound, scent, and magic. John must rely on his senses, but his step is quiet and inevitable. It might have been easier if John did it like the hunters. However, neither of those groups can exemplify the sheer certainty, calmness and determination.

Iosef’s death has been illuminating in more ways than one. John’s eyes had burned a quick-then-gone blue when his claws dropped, for the first time in Stiles’ presence, just to shred through the man.

It’s not the first time Stiles has seen a werewolf kill. It’s not the first time he’s helped. But it’s nothing like Stiles has done with the pack. Back home it has always been a struggle, the rule of the jungle, kill or be killed.

John is a _professional_. Stiles knew, John had told him, but only when watching him work did it finally enter his skull. No wonder the moniker Baba Yaga stuck. Derek was right; John is like a creature from a child’s story that you turn to only when all other options are exhausted.

Most importantly, Stiles wishes he could feel the fear that John must inspire in others. It would be the healthy reaction. It’s the normal thing to happen. However, all Stiles feels is wariness and concern. He wishes he’d learned about John under different circumstances.

Elbow deep in the folders filled with papers mostly written in Russian, Stiles is glad he’s passable in the language. After last year’s issue with a chort, Lydia had bullied him into some classes, saying, “Aren’t you supposed to be Polish anyway?”

Stiles, at the time, had not been able to argue with her on the topic of languages, simply because he knew that she would just push Polish onto his plate as well as Russian. In retrospect, Stiles thinks as he begins stuffing files, folders, telephones and recorders into his backpack, Lydia would have never made such a mistake. She was waiting on Stiles to call her out on it. Stiles just never did.

“Come on, we need to leave,” John warns, standing guard and glaring at the priest.

They’ve already lingered too long.

Stiles nods and zips up his backpack. He’d cleaned out the safe of anything that appeared to look useful though he can’t tell what he’s looking for until he can go through it.

When Stiles is out of the safe, being glared at by the priest, John throws a few grenades inside, setting the cash and the artwork on fire. At first Stiles considers saying something but he keeps his mouth shut as he follows John out of the church and up the stairs of a neighbouring building. On the rooftop, John pulls out binoculars and begins to watch the street while Stiles sits on the ground with his backpack.

He upends everything and begins rifling through the material.

Stiles wishes he had more time. He could have brought his laptop with him and connected the phones and dictaphones to it, so Danny could make copies just in case. Of course, Stiles has no such luck. After all, the priest will be notifying Viggo and, though he doesn’t know how much regeneration lasts for a witch, he’s sure Midday will be hunting for him the moment she’s cognizant.

Stiles just hopes they can deal with Viggo without interference.

John makes a noise in his throat to inform Stiles that Viggo has arrived just as Stiles finds what he’s looking for. Transcripts of messages, a phone with pictures, more. He photographs as much as he can and sends it Derek’s way.

Perhaps, Stiles hopes, the Assembly will listen to him if the Coven won’t listen to Stiles.

He’d wanted Derek far away from this mess in New York. He needed to make sure that torching the nemeton worked, but he also needed Derek safe. Beacon Hills is his territory. Even with Stiles so far away, his wards weakened by his absence, the land would have protected the pack.

There’s no such guarantee here.

“Viggo definitely has blackmail on Midday,” Stiles tells John.

“We’re in play.” He drops the binoculars and looks at Stiles. “Ready?”

Stiles climbs to his feet and takes the binoculars from John to look at the men on the street. None of them, save the man from the Red Circle, are werewolves. Good.

“You know,” Stiles says as they make their way from the rooftop, “I think your friend Marcus has a good idea. It would have been easier to snipe them.”

John hums. “Not if you need someone alive.”

“That’s fair,” Stiles says. After all, Stiles needs Viggo to testify to breaching pack territory in front of the Assembly. He needs all the evidence he can get if he wants to keep his head.

“You deal with the werewolf,” John tells him. They take cover behind a parked van. “Shoot for the head.”

If it were Scott, Erica, or even Jackson, Stiles would have made a comment about leaving the hardest work to Stiles. However he knows that killing an alpha is a recipe for disaster. Nobody wants _Jackson_ to be alpha. Not even Jackson wants Jackson to be alpha no matter how much he bitches. However, this is John, and so Stiles keeps his mouth shut. John knows what he’s doing.

The gun isn’t awkward in Stiles’ hands as much as he wishes it was. The first time he’d held one was when his dad had tried to teach him. The second time was when Chris Argent, coaxed by Allison, had given him one in hopes of teaching him to defend himself. It was been a painful process. For both of them.

Now, Stiles tries not to think about the fact it’s people he’s shooting at, only whether his bullets are connecting or not. The smell of wolfsbane in the air is acrid, even to his senses. It must be hell on John’s lungs.

Stiles summons the shielding spell after a bullet whizzes too close to his ear, the same one he’d used on John in the Red Circle, and the same one the bat had somehow managed to replicate when they’d confronted Iosef.

The magic washes over him, pulsing. It's never done that before. He feels the bat, tucked into one of his sleeves, and it makes him shiver. The demon within it is hungry, eating up the excess magic. He simply couldn’t sense it before, whether it’s due to exposure or subpar abilities. After all, if Stiles were his regular self, using the bat would have been exhausting. The only barricade between _it_ and him, apparently, is having the nemeton’s magic which he’d sucked into himself.

He definitely made a mistake when dealing with the nemeton. He just doesn’t know what it is.

Like a third hand, he senses John moving somewhere to his left even as he focuses on evading fire behind a van on the right. Stiles breathes, thinks: just like in training with Chris. He reloads, shoots. Still, he doesn’t see the bullets as much as he feels them ricocheting away from his magic. What he does see is who’d shot them: the werewolf.

Stiles is getting tired of him.

The werewolf runs to another van, wrenching the drivers doors open, and Stiles gives chaise. He’s there, just in time, to place his hand on the hub and fry the engine with electricity, shutting it off. The werewolf stumbles out, shaking himself off. His eyes are red when he looks at Stiles, his growl belly deep.

The kick of adrenaline at that point is familiar. Stiles pulls the trigger, but his gun jams. He just has the time to grab his bat to stop one large claw from shredding his face. The werewolf yelps, burned, and that’s all the opportunity Stiles needs to take a swing.

The thing about mountain ash is that it’s not supposed to be used as a weapon. It’s a barrier, protection. It’s like the ring of salt, the red string, the water someone pours on the steps for good luck. The bat, for werewolves, is not a bat as much as it’s a wall coming to meet them at 70 miles per hour.

The werewolf goes stiff, then slumps.

John passes by Stiles, running towards another black van. Stiles sees Viggo already inside, but a quick bullet to one of the tires makes it swerve, skid, and hit the fence. A man stumbles out of the passenger side, lifting his arms.

Stiles goes towards him and knocks him out in the similar fashion. On the other side, John, for the lack of a better word, intimidates Viggo out of the car.

“Cool it, cool it, cool it,” Viggo says to John. “What do you want?”

“Pull the contract,” John growls out. Stiles can see the wolf rising to the surface. John is baring his teeth and they’re far from human.

“And you promise to let me live?” Viggo replies.

John nods in confirmation. Viggo, slowly, extricates his phone from his breast pocket and dials a number.

“It’s done,” he says a couple of tense minutes later.

That’s when Stiles makes use of his bat and hits him over the head with it. Comeuppance.

#### -

Midday’s phone is locked and refuses to let Stiles through even when he tries to coax it with magic. He plays with it while John carries the three unconscious men back into the church through the rear entrance. It ringing in the middle of Stiles contemplating whether to fry it or not, and really why didn’t Derek think of bringing Danny with him in the first place, is unexpected. The number isn’t saved so Stiles battles the urge to make a snarky comment and, naturally, answers.

“Where are you?” says a harried voice. It almost reminds him of Gretta, if Gretta had a vaguely British accept and was capable of more emotions than _anger_ and _grief_. “I’ve just received the most alarming report!”

Stiles licks his lips, considers changing his voice, but finally ends up saying, “Wouldn’t have anything to do with the Assembly would it?”

There’s a brief silence on the other end. Then the woman says, “What did you do to Midday?”

Stiles laughs. John gives him a _look_ which means he’s probably not supposed to be screwing around.

“Nothing. The better question is what _she_ wants to do to _me_ ,” Stiles replies. He steps into the church to watch Jon carry three chairs from the other part that isn't under construction. It seems Tarasov had been keen on renovating. Or money laundering, which was probably the more accurate case.

“Oh dear,” the woman says. The concern is back in her voice. “We don’t have time for you right now. We’re at the brink of war.”

Stiles looks at Viggo, slumped and duct taped to a chair.

“Did you know Tarasov was blackmailing Midday to let him muscle into the Community’s territory?” Stiles asks.

“Don’t be ridiculous dear, nobody blackmails a _witch_. Now, why don’t you pass the phone back to Midday so I can--”

“Theoretically, if I stopped this war, would you _have_ to kill me?”

The woman’s voice grows even more alarmed. “Nobody wants to _kill_ you Mr. Stilinski. Lightly maim, at _most_ , but that’s just a side effect of stripping you of the nemeton’s magic. Nothing you couldn’t _heal_ from.”

“Right. So you don’t kill people.”

“Not if we can help it!” her voice is shrill. She sounds offended.

“Great, because Midday employed me to kill a human, you know Tarasov’s son. The reason why you’re at war.”

Stiles hears another ‘oh dear’ and then the phone clicks off. He shrugs and pockets it. He looks at the three men in front of him.

Kidnapping was, as far as Jackson’s concerned, one of Stiles’ earliest transgressions. In Stiles’ defense, he’d only been trying to keep the public safe from a murder-lizard. True, he’d not had evidence at the time, but his gut feeling was telling him Jackson was dangerous. His gut feeling has yet to fail him. In any case, he was right, even though Jackson turned into a werewolf in the end.

There’s no noble excuse this time, Stiles thinks as he watches the werewolf wake. As usual, werewolves tend to heal faster. With no wolfsbane or mountain ash present, sans Stiles’ bat, his healing factor has left him undamaged and aware.

The moment he sees Stiles he tenses, writhing against the restraints. He could snap the plastic easily, but not so much Stiles’ magic that holds him tied to the chair. His eyes glow red, face shifting into a snarl.

The noise of his struggle echoes unpleasantly against the naked walls of the church. The scaffolding does nothing to muffle the sounds.

“Hey dude,” Stiles says, waving his hand. “That-- yeah no the harder you struggle the worse the magic gets so just. Chill for a moment.”

The werewolf glares but does, in the end, stop. Stiles feels a hysterical laughter lodged in his throat which he hopes won’t come out. If someone told him that one day he could hold an alpha werewolf down with only his magic, he would have probably laughed and told them to fuck off.

“What’s your name?” Stiles asks, conversationally. “Kind of tired of making myself call you _the werewolf_ in my head.”

As expected he gets to reply. Stiles sighs. “Come on dude work with me a little here. I’m Stiles you’re-- no? Fine. What pack do you belong to?”

The werewolf frowns but is mum even though he flinches when Stiles gets closer. His eyes are on the bat for a moment, then he looks at Stiles, defiant.

“Were you the one who told Viggo how to hit the Coven?” Stiles asks again. The man’s lips press together into a thin line.

Stiles glances over his shoulder at John who is standing behind the bound men, where neither can see him.

Perhaps intimidation works for John but it’s never been Stiles’ strong suit. He looks, after all, how he looks. So instead of intimidating, Stiles tucks away his bat into his sleeve, a neat trick he’d learned from a fae two years ago, and walks the rest of the way towards the werewolf until he can place his hand onto his knee.

“Hey, look, I really need to know this because I really need some info to fuck with the Coven, and I really don’t like harming wolves if I can help it being an emissary and all. Makes me itchy for like, three days afterwards.”

The man tenses, for a moment, then he sniffs. He looks to the side, at the two men who are still unconscious, then he huffs.

“Viggo already knew. Just didn’t know what to do with the information. It’s...Kirill.” The man cringes. “The witches were pushing into the pack turf. Needed them to back off.”

“Kirill. That’s like painfully Russian. Would that be the same territory Viggo was trying to take?"  
  
"Yeah, I thought that with his help I could...take it back for the pack."

"Thought the Coven can only use wards in other’s territory,” Stiles comments.

The werewolf snorts. “That’s what they like you to think. Then they say, we need a few witches to maintain the wards. Then a few more, then a few warlocks, until the place is overrun.”

“And the Embassy?” Stiles offers.

“They make sure the pack knows that there won’t be anything of them left before the Embassy arrives for the review.” He looks grim as he says it, absolutely certain in what he’s saying. Stiles can imagine an alpha sacrificing himself for his pack. It’s not unfamiliar.

Kirill looks somehow even more nervous when he asks, ”What has this to do with Wick?”

“Nothing. Iosef’s involvement with him was separate from the Community’s issue,” Stiles says before he throws a glance over to John who twitches.

The werewolf nods, as if resigning himself to the inevitability of a violent death. “I knew we were done when we got the word. Especially when the Continental suddenly started whispering about an heir. You’re the kid that burned down the nemeton right? You’re dead. The Coven doesn’t play.”

“Neither do I,” Stiles replies grimly. But that’s his own problem. “Midday is going to kill you if she finds you here with us. Having said that, if I let you go and you take care of what’s left of Viggo’s operation, do you think the Community could expand through his turf?”

The man looks shocked. “I...guess. But it’s up to the Assembly. I can’t step out of line.”

“Gretta Stein.” Stiles says, “Go to her. She’s one of the heads of the Assembly.”

He focuses on the spell, and when he makes a shooing motion, the bonds untie. The werewolf stands and nods at Stiles. He turns towards the exit only to see John, startle, nod at him as well, then walk past him in a hurried step.

“You didn’t have to do that,” John says.

“I have a soft spot for self-sacrificial dumbasses,” Stiles shoots back just in time to watch the man who was with Viggo in the car awake.

He looks around, spots Viggo’s prone form, spots Stiles, then looks up at the rooftop as if praying. Slumping in his chair, he exhales one heartfelt, “Fuck.”

Stiles is tempted to laugh but all he does is say, “Mr. Wick has informed me you’re a lawyer. How do you feel about cutting a deal with me?”

He looks up and down at Stiles, then says, “If it gets me out alive? Sure.”

“I assume you know Viggo’s been muscling into supernatural territory.”

“Uh yeah. Bad faith man. Told him but. Iosef can -- could -- be very persistent.”

Stiles hums. Viggo comes to before he can finish with the lawyer but it doesn’t matter. He stiffens, frowns at Stiles, and says in Russian, “Who the fuck are you?”

The lawyers, exasperated, says, “Viggo, English, please.”

Viggo ignores him and does not repeat himself.

“ _Just an emissary,”_ Stiles replies.

Viggo’s eyebrows jump. Then he leans back into his chair and says in English, “This is about that witch business isn’t it?”

“Yeah. The Coven wanted you to attack them so they could have an excuse to harm humans. You wanted a similar excuse.”

“I knew Iosef was going to die when he crossed John Wick. But God still looked at me in favor when I learned he was a werewolf,” says Viggo. “A good excuse. Maybe not the best for fighting witches but...eh.”

“Why get greedy?” Stiles asks.

Viggo doesn’t shrug but Stiles senses it in his tone of voice.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time. Infighting. Vulnerable territory. And the witches couldn’t do anything to me since I’m just human.” Viggo’s eyes are hard when he sighs. “You were in that warehouse with John. An heir?”

“Nephew,” Stiles corrects.

“Close enough. But it’s a frightening through, to know that in a few years there will be two Baba Yaga.”

_There won’t be_ , Stiles thinks but keeps it to himself. Instead he pulls out his phone and stops recording. He sends it over to Derek. That’s as much proof as he’s going to get, until both are scooped up by the Assembly.

If Derek succeeds.

Stiles nods and John hits both over the head with the butt of a pistol. He ties them up and carries them out to his car, shutting them inside the trunk.

Stiles is about to climb into the passenger seat when something clips the side of the car, pushing it to swerve. It’s only Stiles’ reflexes which make him bring up the shielding spell. Having a ton of angry metal hitting the spell sends Stiles back, rolling in the street.

Stiles’ phone rings. Derek. Despite the situation, Stiles picks up.

“Where are you?” Derek’s tone is hard and no-nonsense.

“The church, Little Russia,” Stiles says as he gets up as quickly as he can. “I think Midday found us. Hurry.”

The same thing that had launched itself at the car now comes barreling at Stiles. He knocks it back with the shielding spell and John, finally extricating himself from the car, shoots it.

The bullets John uses are with wolfsbane, nicked from Viggo’s men, but not all creatures are vulnerable to it. He sees the thing, striga, crumple before something else connects with the car.

Stiles ducks the car this time and turns to see Midday. There’s still blood splatter on her clothes and golden earrings and necklaces. Her face has healed, even though her hair is clumped with dried blood, but it has contorted into something old and revolting in that sort of way 3rd degree burn scars are revolting.

She doesn’t talk. Instead, Midday sends a wave of magic that pushes the car so both Stiles and Jon have to evade lest they be crushed under the wheels. The car hits the fence and stays.

At first Stiles sees five, then eight, then twelve, creatures standing next to Midday. The longer he stares the more appear. He loses the count when they rush him, around the twenty-fifth mark.

For one imperceptible moment John has his human face on, and in the other it’s shifting into its beta form, blue eyes glacial and promising no clemency. There’s no growl of warning, no howl for help. John simply uses up the leftover bullets, briefly switches to a knife which he leaves in an artery, before his claws take over.

The creatures fall, one after another, so many of them Stiles can barely catalog them. He can’t think much at all, considering he has to deal with sharp teeth far too close to his soft bits. The bat is good for a head-to-head battle but impractical when dealing with _swarms_. He cannot use the blast he used in the bar either, too many people, and John has no cover.

Yet, his magic doesn’t need any fine tuning for it to do what he wishes. As if he’s just a Tesla coil, he barely has to even think of swinging the bat before the electricity follows, fortifying the blow, his magic crackling and sparking underneath his skin, impatient to do it all over again.

Shit, Stiles thinks, even as he bludgeons another _bies_.

“Oh this is so bad. Creatures shifted out in the open? Midday really,” Stiles says, panting. “You’re risking a whole lot. And I cleaned up your mess too.”

“Shut up,” Midday hisses. “I’m ending this bullshit here.”

Stiles can barely duck when she swipes at him with something. A scythe? Sheers? Stiles can’t tell, he can’t see it properly.

If Stiles kills Midday here, he will definitely be marked. The Coven will not tolerate losing one of their own, but Stiles has to consider it as a possibility now. There’s only so much energy he and John have.

Stiles ducks under claws, and sees John has ripped out someone’s throat. Blood sprays everywhere, soaking into his white shirt, but John simply spits the excess blood in his mouth and continues.

It’s too close to home.

Stiles bites his lip and focuses on his magic. There’s so much of it around him, from the creatures and Midday, it’s almost overwhelming.

Mountain ash comes to mind, the first circle he made, and he feels thunder rumbling inside him as if it’s groaning its assent.

Stiles isn’t sure what he’s doing. He never really is. He just lets the electricity course through him, and when he waves his hands it disperses, cutting an arch. The smell of burnt hair is immediate, as are the shrieks.

Stiles stumbles, almost falls, but John’s there to grab him so he doesn’t land on his ass. For a moment all magic goes quite. Then his proverbial ears pop, and he can feel Midday’s magic pulsing around them just before the air itself catches fire, and Stiles is tugging at John, pulling him back and under his shield. His magic trembles under Midday’s, threatening to give in.

It’s a bad moment to remember that he burned the nemeton and that the same power he now wields didn’t help it from the fire. The moment he’s aware of it, the shield breaks, and Jon’s twisting them around, to shield Stiles from the onslaught.

Nobody ever tells you how loud fire really is. It doesn’t roar, not like thunder, it’s not there and gone. Instead, it’s a constant noise, a thousand waves breaking on jagged edges of a cliff. John’s groan of pain is louder.

Good think, Stiles thinks, that Derek isn’t there.

“I found the blackmail,” Stiles shouts. The fire stops and John doesn’t collapse as much as he slumps, biting back the pain and holding himself up with, Stiles thinks, sheer fucking force of will.

In Stiles’ breast pocket, one of the phones starts ringing. “Talked with your superior about it.”

Midday’s growl of frustration reverberates through the air. “Just fucking die already,” she curses.

Stiles prepares himself for another spell, but something catches his eye.

A black SUV rapidly approaches Midday and her creatures, drifts into a half circle, and comes to a stop with the doors facing the crowd. The tires skid, loud enough for John to flinch, but Midday doesn’t even turn around. Next to it, a somewhat older prius screeches to a stop, the engine clunking then dying.

A woman flies out of the prius, not even bothering to close the doors. She reminds Stiles of one of those children of flowers he’d seen on TV, who instead of sobering up in the 90s opened a holistic shops and still have a tendency towards large necklaces and beaded curtains. Except, Stiles notes, she looks thunderous, clutching her phone in her hand.

“Danica!” she yells in that sort of way every homeroom teacher and parents of a five year-olds have mastered.

Midday flinches visibly and turns. Her eyes grow twice their size and she wavers on her feet, leaning away, as if the couple of inches could save her from the incoming freight train of a 5’5” angry Indian witch.

The older woman walks up to Midday who actually steps back. “Shruti, I--”

The slap echoes through the crowd. Shruti only says, “No.” as if Midday were a dog.

“But you told me to deal with the boy--”

“Shut it!”

Stiles places her voice just as he watches a black woman, dressed even more heavily in gold than Midday, step out of the SUV. The air turns thin and cold, full of knives that stab the lungs, as if they were in the middle of winter. Midday’s expression goes from apologetic to very, very _concerned_.

The woman observes the scene evenly, cataloging the dead bodies littering the pavement, John covered in blood, Stiles and his bat, the creatures either wounded or still standing, finishing up with Midday who appears to have been rendered mute.

To his even bigger surprise, Stiles watches as Gretta Stein unfolds herself from the back seat of the SUV, eyes briefly flashing red, until finally the driver’s side door opens and Derek appears, looking only mildly harassed.

The other woman steps forward then and claps her hands. Her golden jewelry catches light though Stiles doubts it’s a natural effect.

“Everyone,” she says, her voice carrying. “This is now the case of the Embassy. Make your way to the closest post immediately.”

It’s an order. He watches as the creatures waver, shift back, then one after another disappear, leaving only John, who has his human face on, and Stiles.

The woman’s eyes connect with Stiles’. “Mr. Stilinski. Mr. Wick, if you’d be so kind to follow me. We have much to talk about.”

“Uh,” Stiles says, and glances at John. “Right. We just need to get some things.”

The woman lifts an eyebrow.

“Papers,” Stiles says. “And two men. In the trunk of the car.”

“You kidnapped humans?”

“Viggo Tasarov and his lawyer,” Stiles explains.

The crease between the woman’s eyebrows smooths out. “There will be a team to clean up this mess. Worry not about your evidence Mr. Stilinski.” The woman looks around with a disgusted curl to her mouth. “There’s plenty already.”

#### -

The Embassy’s closest headquarters, a five minute drive and ridiculously close to the Continental, have interrogations rooms within which Stiles spends the rest of his day explaining everything from the time Scott had been bitten up until the moment the cavalry had arrived.

The woman, an Arbiter as she’d introduces herself later, goes over all the evidence with him. She doesn’t seem to want to pin everything on Stiles, which is definitely an improvement.

After all is done, she says, “There should have been someone supervising the nemeton. Rest assured, Mr. Stilinski, there will be a full review of the Coven’s actions.”

The woman called Shruti enters the interrogation with his bat which had been confiscated and sits next to the Arbiter. She doesn’t look happy, but she definitely appears less severe then in front of the church.

“You can have your property back Mr. Stilinski. Though old and stubborn, the Coven has dealt with the demon.”

“Thanks,” Stiles says mildly. “What...I mean do you know how it got there in the first place?”

Shruti looks at the Arbiter, before she moves to tuck a strand of graying hair behind her ear. “Oh well, it’s all simple really. It was latching onto the nemeton’s power to survive, you see, and when you destroyed it, the demon jumped ship and followed that power to you. Good thing you were using a _wand,_ as it were, or else you yourself might have been possessed.”

“The question now,” the Arbiter says much more gravely, “is what to do with you. Admittedly, you absorbed the nemeton’s power only due to being the emissary of the area, but now there’s much to consider.”

Shruti nods. “Containment, control, manipulation--”

“It wasn't my intention to take the power,” Stiles intervenes before his stomach can lurch from the nerves. It appears to be the right thing to say.

#### -

When he’s finally released, Stiles finds John downstairs in the lounge sitting across from Derek in a comfortable silence. Someone has given him a washcloth so only his shirt is still soaked with blood.

Stiles’ attention is stolen away by Derek who stands, and all the weight of the past few days come crashing down on Stiles’ shoulders. He goes to him mechanically, magnetically, the point of the needle turning to the true north, and he shudders when Derek’s arms wrap around him in a firm, secure hug.

He’s missed him so much. Stiles inhales his scent, feels his warmth penetrate Stiles’ numb limbs, the sensation of having him so close again lighting his spark alive.

It’s difficult for an emissary to be away from his pack, especially his alpha. But it’s also difficult for Stiles to be so far away from the man he loves.

They linger, hugging, so Derek can sniff at his neck, scent him.

“You’re crushing my ribs,” Stiles says breathlessly. However, Derek just hums until he’s had his fill.

“Come on,” Derek says, “Let’s get you and your uncle home.”

Stiles turns around, feeling a flush on his cheeks spreading. He’d forgotten they have audience. However John says nothing, looking tired more than anything.

“Wasn’t Gretta here?” Stiles asks, curious about her absence.

John shrugs. “Had business to deal with.” He doesn’t add anything, and only stands and follows them out to the car.

Once they’re on the road, Stiles punches Derek’s arm. “Since when did you get diplomatic?”

“Since someone told me I can’t growl at every threat and hope it works,” Derek fires back. He glares at Stiles. “And who told me charging head first into a fight is not a strategy?”

“Hey!” Stiles shouts. “We had a plan!”

“You were being stupid,” Derek replies.

Stiles clicks his tongue. “John was with me!”

Derek looks at John in the rear-view mirror. “Thanks, again, for dealing with his bullshit.”

Stiles’ outrage is largely ignored by John who looks down at his phone, then says, “Can you drop me off near the bridge?”

“Oh,” Stiles says while Derek replies, “Sure.”

“Do you...need help?” Stiles asks, turning to look at him. However, John merely shakes his head. There’s something strange in John’s eyes, Stiles thinks. Now with Derek there, what they did doesn’t really seem real. Not the hotel, or the suit, or the golden coins.

“No,” John says, and when the car stops he leaves.


	7. Chapter Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An outro.

The Dog bounds up the stairs barking softly, tail wagging as he reaches the front doors. He waits expectantly, but the shadow that falls on the opaque glass doesn’t reach for the doorknob.

Two imploring eyes turn towards him just in time for the bell to ring again. The Dog trots back to John, who tries not to feel his age as he gets up from the couch. Something has not healed right after he busted Abram’s shop though it’s only a matter of time until he starts coughing up the shrapnel. 

Jon shambles over to the doors and pulls them open. 

It took him two days to get the location of Abram’s shop and a day to track down someone with a keycard and go get his car. He’s been sleeping for two days straight since then, only getting up to eat and feed the dog. Recovering. As he looks at Stiles, who has some fresh clothes on, a flush to his skin, and smells of sex, John thinks he’s been doing the same. 

He’d gotten the text that Stiles was staying with Derek, as he’d surmised would be the case when the two had hugged in the lobby, only nearing midnight. John really didn’t want to know then and he doesn’t want to know now. 

“Only you?” John asks, letting Stiles pass.

“Derek had some business to finish with the Assembly,” Stiles replies. “He’s sorry that you had to meet under such circumstances, you being family and all.”

John shrugs. They never get to choose. “Lunch?” 

“Please.”

Stiles’ eyes descend on Dog and then it’s the same picture as that of a few days ago with Daisy. It aches. Jon knows it’s over, it has to be over, but he’s found little peace in his vengeance. Now, he feels only hollow. 

After Stiles is satisfied with petting Dog, they go into the kitchen and John grills them some chicken. He needs protein for healing. Stiles managed to magic-away the damage witchfire made on his skin even though it had taken a chunk out of him. It meant the rest of his injuries John had to heal the old fashioned way. Considering fire is the one thing wolves usually can’t heal from, John is grateful for the impermanence of the wound that would have covered his whole back.

“Where did you get him?” Stiles asks.

“A clinic.” Marcus had made a joke that he ought to find another dog and return to his retirement. John didn’t really see an issue in taking that literally.

They eat in relative peace, broken only by Dog’s sporadic whining that gets encouraged by Stiles feeding him bits from his plate. 

Once they’re done, Stiles says, “The Embassy did an investigation into the New York Coven. That pack got their land back, but they won’t be spreading into Viggo’s territory. Don’t know what they did with Midday but I don’t think we’ll be seeing her again.”

John hums. Good to know. “What about you?”

Stiles huffs out a laugh. “Instead of magical-flaying, I had to sign a contract with them. While I’m here for college I’ll be working for the Coven but afterwards I’m free.”

“How did Derek take it?”

“I was going to move for college anyway. This way he knows someone can keep an eye on me. Gretta...well. Turns out she likes him. She’d insisted on talking with me after she found out I was an emissary.”

John’s mouth quirks, amused. “How’d that go?”

Gretta had greeted him in her usual chilly manner while he’d been waiting in the foyer with Derek. She had her game-face on and righteous fury written all over her body-language, as if she’d ever actually cared for either of them enough to take what the Coven did seriously. John can freely bet what she did for them is only because she will be reaping benefits.

At least John has seen her make an absolute fool of herself.

“Painfully. But I think she hates me less now, so progress? She should be introducing Derek to the California representative right about now.” Stiles pushes his fork around the empty plate. “What are you going to do now?”

“Go back to retirement,” John says, more reflex than a concrete plan. “Take up a hobby.”

Stiles snorts and laughs. “Well. Good luck with that.” He isn’t awkward as much a he’s tentative when he says, “You know it doesn’t seem real now. What happened. What we did.”

“Good,” Jon tells him with conviction. “You don’t belong in this world.”

The bell rings again and this time it’s Stiles who jumps up and gets it. From the foyer John can hear a sharp, “Dad!” 

A groan follows soon after it. 

He leaves the kitchen just in time to see Noah being crushed in a hug. He remembers then Claudia once telling him,  _ “This is a hugging household, John.”  _

“Alright, alright,” Noah huffs, patting Stiles on the back. He catches John’s eye over Stiles’ shoulder and he shakes his head as if to say  _ ‘look what I have to deal with _ ’. 

Stiles liberates his father so he and John can shake hands. “All wrapped up then?” John asks. 

“Don’t even ask,” Noah sighs, sounding strained. “I don’t want to think about another body in the woods for at least a month.”

Social graces aren’t lost on John only because he’s trained himself to remember them; he invites Noah to the living room where they take a seat.

“Might be longer,” Stiles musses somewhat tentatively as if his tone of voice might make his father forget what he did. “With the nemeton gone and all, I mean.”

Noah’s eyes turn sharp and he says, “We will talk about that  _ later _ .” It’s as parental as it can get. 

Stiles winces. “I think I’ll just...go get my things. Yeah.” He promptly disappears, footsteps echoing on the stairs up to the bedrooms. 

“Coffee?” John offers when the silence grows too big. 

Noah accepts. 

One coffee with milk down, the man says, “I’m sorry about Helen, John. And I’m sorry my son dragged you into his problems.”

John nods. It’s nothing he hasn’t heard before, but he also knows that he appreciates the sentiment. “We can go to the cemetery if you’d like,” he offers as conciliation.

Noah’s mouth quirks. “I was already there. Daisies was it?” 

They speak for a few minutes. Noah doesn’t ask anything about his former profession, about what happened, nothing to indicate Stiles had told him anything he’d learned about John. Just like it never happened, he thinks in Stiles’ voice. 

Only it did happen. John has the evidence in the creak of his joints not yet fully healed, the taste of blood in his mouth he cannot wash out, the scent of burning flesh that clings to skin though it’s long-since healed, and that perpetual stillness that always enshourds him after he’s killed. His rage is gone, melted by the vengeance that has left him bereft and cold. Lost. Stiles was right on the target; John doesn’t know what he’ll do with his life now.

The young man bounds down the stairs with his suitcase in hand.

The Stilinski men make their way to the front doors where they say goodbye. Stiles hugs him, brief but warm all the same. 

“You should come over to Beacon Hills sometimes. Dad and I would be happy to have you.”

“I’ll think about it,” John says. “Drop by when you move to New York.”

Stiles promises he will. They get into a rented car Noah drove to the house, Stiles flailing with his arms as he tries to get the seatbelt on. New York will really have handful once Stiles starts college. 

John had been his age once and in a much darker place. It would be convenient if everyone forgot about Stiles but he knows Winston will be keeping an ear out for him from now on, especially considering he’d interfered on John’s behalf.

In the Embassy’s headquarters John had been questioned by the Arbiter responsible for the Coven; a process John is sure would have lasted much longer had his answers not come down to: “I have nothing to do with this,” and “I’m enlisted with the Continetal.”

Addy had waltzed into the interrogation room dressed within an inch of her immortal life, offered the Arbiter a phone and said, “The Manager would like to speak with you.”

She’d been there when John was promptly released. Not for nothing, the Arbiter doesn’t waste time with things outside her purview.

Afterwards John’s own phone had rung. “How is the nephew?” Winston asked, telling John exactly how much Winston knew.

Marcus had made fun of him, John thinks as he closes the doors and makes his way back to the living room to lay down heavily on the couch. Yet, despite the general depressing view of the Brooklyn bridge, Marcus was hopeful John could go back to his life. Or at least crawl to the semblance of life he’d lead with Helen. 

Without her, it will be difficult but at least John would be alive to remember; a specter, living in a mausoleum, haunting pictures whose number will never increase, books never to be read again, vases never to be removed. A wristwatch that stopped working after a car-crash, the fracture lines on the glass letting the gazer know only the moment of impact. John stopped ticking the same day he lost Helen.

He will become a memory, echoing in a hollow cave. Just like the dog whom John still can’t name, there only to remind him of what he has lost.

John isn’t sure if he wants that. By the time he thinks to ask himself the question, his attention is slipping away. His thoughts spiral, as if he’s half-asleep or placed in a trance, where he’s only able to recall stray words he’d caught over the years and sentences whose roots he cannot determine. 

_ Days like this scattered among the rest _ , but the issue remains what to do when all the rest are the same as the others. _ I am your light,  _ a song whose melody he cannot recall.  _ What is he _ , a sentence he’s heard so many times but uttered only once with fascination and not dread.

Words echo:  _ you will owe me _ ,  _ blood for blood,  _ and a sweet, curling, accented, utterance of ‘ _ buonasera’ _ .

He hears someone ringing the doorbell. When he opens his eyes night has fallen. He’s not sure which day it is. 

John pads in bare feet over to the doors, though the silhouette he can see already tells him all he needs to know. When he pulls the doors open he sees the devil himself, smiling. 

Santino D’Antonio measures him up, and John feels like a match dragged across the striking surface of the matchbox, sparking on fire. “Ciao, John,” he says, pleasant and beautiful.

Somewhere inside him, the clock ticks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for following this fic.


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